It turned out to have been the final line to a number, for the curtain fell and people clapped. Of the four of us, only Martha laughed.
I studied the price list on the table. The cheapest item was lemonade which cost fifty-five cents. It gave me a shock and I wanted to put the paper away but Werther's aunt had already seen me reading it and asked whether I would like something. 'No, not at all,' I said quickly. Meanwhile the curtain rose for a new act. It seemed to be a kind of play; I didn't understand it. It began as follows: in a room with a screen and a desk, two men in white coats were waiting. Thin rubber tubes dangled from their pockets. 'A doctor's life's a hard one,' one said. 'Never ever a nice bit of totty at surgery time,' the other said.
Werther's aunt signalled the waiter and asked him for a programme but there wasn't one. 'It goes on all the time and each time there'll be something different,' he replied. Werther's aunt ordered a coffee for herself and lemonade for the three of us.
The play continued. A fat lady entered with a girl, presumably her daughter. She wished to be examined and undressed herself behind the screen. She came out from behind it a few times to look out to the left and the right. She had taken off more clothes each time, clothes she had hung out over the screen from the inside. Every time she appeared, people laughed loudly. The girl stood looking at the floor with her fingers in her mouth. 'Can you play mummies and daddies?' one of the doctors asked. 'How does that go?' the girl asked in a stupid, petulant tone of voice. The people at the tables laughed.
I became afraid and decided not to look any longer. With great difficulty I drank from the lemonade which was fizzing up my nose. Werther's aunt seemed to notice. 'You don't have to drink it against your will,' she said. I got out the money now and planned to cast the sum wrapped in paper into her handbag.
Meanwhile I spied on Martha and Werther. Martha appeared to think everything that happened on stage to be colourful and funny. She laughed repeatedly. Werther, however, stared out ahead of himself with a gloomy look.
Using the tubes I recognised as those of a stethoscope, one of the doctors examined the lady now only left wearing her corset and shoes. Meanwhile he muttered comments which drew laughs, here and there, but we were sitting too far off to hear them.
I wanted to cast the wrapped-up money with as fluent as possible a movement into Werther's aunt's open handbag but the throw missed and it dropped on the ground. She heard it and picked it up. 'Did that drop from the table?' she asked me. 'I don't know,' I replied. 'Someone's sure to have left it,' she decided, having opened up the paper. Great shock gripped me for it turned out to have been written on. She read it out: 'Milkman, a jug and a half please, will settle up with you tomorrow.' It contained nothing further so I felt somewhat more at ease again. She decided that it was pointless to make an effort to track down the owner. 'You three may buy some sweets with it,' she said.
The doctor had finished the examination and declared she was healthy. Then, without her having undressed herself, he examined the daughter. 'She needs an injection very badly,' he said. 'Gosh, how can you tell so soon?' the mother cried, 'she hasn't even taken anything off yet. 'No,' the other said, 'we can tell from just seeing her.' Then mother and daughter made to leave.
'Your daughter had better come to the surgery tomorrow afternoon, alone,' the first doctor said. 'Is it expensive?' the mother asked. 'No, not at all,' the doctor assured her, 'she'll have that injection for nothing.' 'Can it do any harm?' the lady now asked. 'No, not at all,' the doctor assured her. 'They do occasionally get fat for a while,' the other one said, 'but that passes of its own accord.'
The audience roared. Werther's aunt called the waiter. 'Will the animals still be coming?' she asked, 'the dog with that hoop?' 'No, madam,' the man replied, 'that was last week.' 'So what's on now then?' she persisted. She learned that the programme consisted of sketches, tapdancing and acrobatics. Werther looked on intently during the conversation. I suddenly got the feeling that perhaps he had the same thoughts as I did: that possibly, without anyone knowing it - for it was being kept a secret - we were brothers.
'This's not very suitable,' his aunt said. 'We'll leave.'
With extreme willpower, I began to drink down my lemonade. A finale developed on stage: having left to applause, the woman returned with her daughter and the orchestra made thumping drum rolls. Suddenly all four of them put on wigs, seemingly made of dusters or cotton wool, and stepped to the edge of the stage. The music struck up a slow, dragging melody. All four, in time to the music, began jerkily to thrust their hips forwards and backwards, singing in harmony: 'Roger here 'n Roger there 'n Roger please, all day; if Roger's still available, it's Roger now till May.' They bowed at the end, the music drumming once again. We went outside.
'It was really nice last week,' Aunt Truus said, 'but this's not quite suitable.' I wondered where we were trundling off to. 'Why don't the two of you go off and buy something,' she said all of a sudden, giving Werther the money and she sent him and me together into a grocer's shop. There were rather a lot of people standing there. Werther,' I said as we waited, 'you must come with me on Sunday to my uncle and aunt. I've been with you this time so you may come with me on Sunday. You've really deserved that.' We bought dates and sticks of rock and spent the entire amount. I wanted to request him again to accompany me on Sunday, but we'd already left the shop and returned to his aunt. She approved our purchases. It began to drizzle. Werther divided up the dates but I didn't like them. 'I'd better go home again,' I said. His aunt tried to talk me into staying with them but I didn't give in. 'I have to be back early,' I said. In the end she gave way and asked whether I had money for the tram. 'Oh yes,' I said but I had none on me. When she wanted to take me there, I said I still wanted to look at a few window displays and would then take the tram myself. I left with a fleeting wave of the hand. When they were some way off already, I walked back and asked Werther if I could count on him on Sunday. Before he had answered, I had run off already but in this short time his aunt handed me a stick of rock which I accepted. I began to travel the very long road home on foot and ate the stick of rock, without relish.
'Did you give that aunt the money,' my mother asked. 'Yes, she's got it,' I said. Was it nice?' she asked. 'Yes, it was a giggle,' I said flatly and went up to the loft. Here I wrote a note to Werther, which read as follows: Werther. You must come along on Sunday afternoon because it's great fun. Come to my place as early as you can. When you get home the letter will be on the mat already.' When I went to deliver it, the same rain prevailed as when we had set out. In front of Werther's house there was a white car; some people stood talking beside it. I passed them, entered the porch and popped the note into the letter box. The moment I had done this I heard the clump of footsteps on the stairs and noisy voices that developed into cries. Now hold on, easy,' a high-pitched man's voice said, 'and don't let go.' I listened at the letter box. Thudding, half stumbling noises sounded, as if there was a struggle. At this moment a man from the group standing by the car approached me and chased me off. I ran some way into the park and sought out the spot where I had been on the lookout before, and I settled down on the trunk. The same way as previously, I continued to spy on Werther's house. Nothing extraordinary happened, however. The shrubs gave inadequate shelter so I started to get wet and went home.
Early that same evening Werther came to bring a reply in a letter which he handed to my mother. She called me but when I reached the door, Werther had already disappeared. The note ran: 'Dear Elmer. I'd love to come with you. I'll come to you; you mustn't come to me. I'll come over to you before it's Sunday. You must not come to my house. Werther.' This letter made me think.
He didn't turn up for the rest of the week. I thought he had forgotten the entire appointment and began to write a new letter, but -I destroyed it.
On Sunday, when I had installed myself on the lookout in the loft, I saw Werther approaching at almost half past two. We set off. 'You're sure to like it,' I said: 'that's why I have brought you al
ong.' The truth was that I didn't want to go to my uncle and aunt on my own. They had asked my mother why not send me over this Sunday. They lived in an upper-storey flat on the Tweede Oosterparkstraat.
My uncle sold goldfish in the market. His stock stood in large tin baths on the veranda at the back. When, sitting on my heels, I looked at the fish swimming among the floating water plants, my mood would always turn sombre and I would feel desolation encroaching. The house was situated close to a comer and the veranda only provided a view of a blank wall plastered white. (Thin, blue smoke would settle in the gardens frequently.)
We spoke little on the way. The weather was dark but dry and windless. I foresaw that the afternoon would run a bad course.
My aunt greeted us warmly and gave each of us a piece of Christmas cake. My uncle wasn't home. She went and sat at the window and brought out her cithern. Underneath the strings she laid out a trapezium shaped sheet of music which didn't contain notes but little balls connected by a jagged line. When the sheet had been placed accurately, the little balls, each lying beneath their relevant strings, indicated the plucking point for the melody.
As always, she began with the song about a frog that was eaten by a stork: she sang slowly and loudly.
Werther sniggered for a moment and stood there listening with a stupid expression on his face. I leant against the alcove door.
At the end of some verse or other, of which the final words ran: 'Mr Stork, Sir', I could no longer contain myself and I just had to look at the brass vase with peacock feathers on a small, three-legged table at the entrance to the alcove. I knew that great sadness had appeared and made my way on to the veranda. There, everything was as I had foreseen. This time, too, there was a hazy veil of smoke between the rows of houses. I looked into the tin baths, dipped my finger in and studied the wall. I knew I had to go back in again but that this, too, would provide no relief.
'That's the wall,' I said out loud, 'and these are the tin baths. The cithem is inside with the song on it. And in the vase the peacock feathers are.' I wanted to start and sing it softly but it wouldn't work. I went back in through the kitchen; my aunt went on singing the song. Without switching the light on, I went and sat in the lavatory and waited. In the end I came off and stayed and stood listening in the hall. The song had finished but now the cithem was playing something else, without any singing. Without a sound, I descended the stairs and went on to the nearby footbridge above the railway. Here I stood for an hour, watching how the smoke of the locomotives mingled with the strands of mist. In the end I clambered down from the bridge again and took up my post on the comer from where I could keep an eye on the house. I stayed and waited here for I did not want to go up there again. After a very long time Werther came out.
Unseen, I followed him for several streets. Then, jumping out at him from behind, I gave him a fright. He was cross for a moment but didn't remain so. 'I thought you'd gone to fetch something somewhere,' he said. Where had you gone?' 'I can't tell you that yet, not right now,' I said, 'though I would like to: it simply has to stay a secret.' When Werther failed to reply I said, to fill the silence: 'It's horrid, the way they live there, I think. Did you like it upstairs?' He replied feebly that he didn't. We walked on. We're going to move,' he said suddenly. 'To the Slingerbeekstraat. That's in Plan Zuid.' I didn't reply. Without my asking anything, he told how the removal would be taking place within a week. He mentioned the number of the house as well.
I was silent a long time. Then I said: 'You've got to be very careful with removals 'cause there're people who move and then they end up in a lesser house than the one they first lived in.' Neither of us said anything after this.
'D'you know why I stayed outside?' I asked after a while. "Cause I think you're boring this afternoon. That's what you are all the time, really.' Before he could reply, I ran out ahead and hid myself away on a comer. Again I gave him a fright but in doing so I collided with him, which made him fall. It fumed out he had grazed the palms of his hands a bit. I apologised and declared it had happened by accident but in truth his injury gratified me.
From now on we kept silent as we walked along. He looked at the ground with a stern expression. I tried to make him laugh several times but didn't succeed.
Approaching my house we took our leave with a bit of a mumble.
I ru ' longer saw him after that. I did, every day after school, walk past his house without ringing the bell.
The sixth day there were no longer any curtains to be seen. I made my way home and took a piece of paper but merely dashed a few scrawls across it. Then I took my brother's bike and rode to the Slingerbeekstraat.
It was slightly foggy, and the street lamps had been lit early. I had remembered the number.
It was a ground floor flat near the corner. The sign with the green star had already been attached to the door.
Without getting off, I slowly rode past the windows and then turned back. 'They live darkly,' I said, softly.
At home I roamed the back garden and pulled the tops off the withered remains of the Michaelmas daisies. Afterwards I fetched the axe from the loft to hack thin branches to bits on top of the fence.
Arthur van Schendel
In a small town with little canals and tall elm trees lived a man who for his entire life had only observed people without having anything to do with them. It was said that he was timid, not a philanthropist although he always subscribed to good causes. Never had he had any other pastime than books and reading; from morning till night, year in, year out, he had long reposed in worlds far from this one. Otherwise he was ordinary - no criticism the two old servants who had known him from his birth lived contentedly in his house. By day and by night he was in his room with the books, occasionally looking out at one of the windows at the back on to the garden, occasionally at one of the windows at the front on to the canal.
One evening at the window he saw black clouds scurrying in the dark; bare branches were being tugged at and the lantern light on the bridge moved up and down. It was chill; he smelled hail. He drew the curtains; he heard the swishing of the branches outside. Seated near the lamp he opened a book on stars, a page full of figures, numbers without end. And he read:
A white woman, on the eve of Spring, sat in the half light of birch trees on a hill by the sea. The trees were motionless. A light flickered in the sky, the sea lay down below in the mist: not a murmur. Beside each tree a strand of vapour rose up, a shape with its arms crossed in front of the head. The strands entwined, the shapes moved from one tree to the next. The leaves rustled, the vapours trembled, a glistening descended. Down below by the sea a voice cried out, a form stood there, a wave flopped on to the beach. The white woman held her hands in front of her face and descended. Then it was night and black and nothing could be heard except for a wave breaking.
His hands were stiff, his feet cold. He had the feeling that there was ice in the room, strange at this time of year. And casting up his gaze from the page beneath the lamp light he discerned the white in front of the curtain of one of the rear windows; he only saw the white of a garment and of a foot stretched out in front. And when another foot had appeared he straightened up and saw the figure had approached to where the lamp light fell. He knew this was no human being, no woman. He rose up and saw the face but, because of the moisture before his eyes, he was only able to discern something deep and dark swathed in white as white as snow. She drew closer and she raised a hand; he heard a voice and at this sound he felt the warmth of tears.
The time has not yet come, she said, perhaps later, then shall the time be. She sat down on the floor in the light of the lamp, hands folded in her lap.
He was a modest man, he dared not ask who she was and whence she had come. But the darkness of her eyes opened to him so he could understand all that she said, and though tears still slid down his cheeks he sat quietly at the sound of her voice.
You hear that I can speak, hence I must be an 'I' like every other creature but it has been a long tim
e since I have known this. I also have memories of a time long before this, when I existed I don't know where. Perhaps it was the place of sorrows for when I think of this from a distance I hear sighing, moaning, weeping, everywhere around, as if multitudes throng and plead in the darkness and one voice sounds that might be mine. In the silences I have heard so much weeping that the thing I long for most is that sound. And at times I have thought without end and worse than all the weeping. Without those thoughts I could never have believed that I might be a human being, not here, no, not here or there, a human being who must be or who has been. Then I see an image before my eyes and it is as if the sun begins; I no longer ask whether it's true or not. I cannot speak of this, that once I may have been a human being, cast out young from mankind and always yearning, always hearing the crying, crying here, crying there, crying within my innermost being.
Her voice became high and plaintive: Why is it that it is so cold here? Tomorrow I must be here, then shall the time be, why so cold?
She rose and had rapidly disappeared in the darkness of the curtain.
Then he heard feet on the steps of the stairs: the maid servants were going to bed. He opened the curtain at the front, saw a hail stone strike the window, the black branches swishing in front of the lantern, but his vision was blurred by the tears in his eyes.
And again in the evening he sat beneath the lamp with his head bent over the book, reading about stars, their courses and distances. And again he suddenly felt the cold to be present there, and casting up his gaze he again saw the whiteness in front of the dark wall. The figure approached more rapidly and when she was sitting he made out the whiteness of the hands and the feet; they seemed hard yet without weight, white as hail without a sheen. She spoke: Dusk is where I have been waiting and no sheen can be there. We acquire sheen when we touch something, something standing on a foundation, here or yonder. The thought has asked whether this is why all the weeping must be. I know I long to touch the world and people but from the depths I must weep that this should happen. Why the fear? We both know that we cry and hear crying everywhere and that we all wish to come. We know the one cannot be without the other and that there must be pain when two meet together. Not two dust specks together without sorrow. That is where warm and cold, light and dark begin; there fear commences. Read in the book whether it says anything about life; mankind thinks of nothing else, after all. Is it this for which we hear sighing, weeping and wailing? Why we call out, want, fear? Is this why the tears fall from your eyes? That will be it, for from afar I recall something about tears. It was dusk, there were trees, tears falling hence upon me. There were eyes all around and voices that sobbed. I think I was young then. But perhaps I remember because I long so, and no longer know yea or nay.
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