Duke of Egypt

by Margriet de Moor

  And that’s what happened, for many years?

  By all the saints of my mother, I don’t say that this isn’t possible. I went on wandering, although I’d been with you for a long time, Lucie. I’m not denying that for a long time I’d been a happy man, a wife, children — a man wants to have his dignity. But I traveled around in the summer and crossed that path now and again. Without being set on it, that’s true, without imagining anything about it at all, I sometimes heard where she was hanging out and that she had remarried and had children, good for her! Longings? Particular memories? No, not at all. I lived the varied life of little towns, camps teeming with children, family, and I liked that. Nothing more. I was cheerful. Really at ease. What? No. If I was aware of the nice horse business in the east of the Netherlands I didn’t think about it. How do you explain that? Sea air, country air, and nocturnal smells of sun-scorched fields, flowers, always different. I never thought of you amid all this, Lucie.

  Go traveling, then! Drizzle has already accompanied the spring for quite a while. The orchard has finished blossoming. For a couple of weeks urges — going far back into European history to the lifestyle of caravan and tent dwellers — have begun to take over your thoughts. Off you go! A huge sense of relief came over you today. It isn’t that you’re not delighted with your house, your animals, your father-in-law, your wife and your children, because on this May morning of all mornings everything is shining with enchantment, but you’re on the point of leaving. Look, there’s Lucie. She walks with you to the door of the car and then she sees you off calmly. If you hadn’t decided to leave, she would have fried eggs for you at noon and at about two she would have exercised one of the competition horses beside you in the young corn. You know her seat. Her feet in the stirrups. Her firm heels. You have been familiar with the plait dangling down her back for all eternity.

  All right, then, you really are not thinking of her anymore, that’s right. On the expressway the signposts glide past you. You watch for the turnoff. You quite simply forget that by now you’re intertwined from top to toe with the country girl who’s long since gone back inside to devote herself to the eternal recurrence of things, starting with washing the dishes. June, July, August, it’s the nicest time of year. After sunshine comes rain and then the sun shines again. Anyway, you are happy. You are fulfilling the tradition that calls for to you to move around in clans with lots of hullabaloo. Do I need to say that in all that fuss about freedom you know you remain touched by that house behind the apple orchard? You seek out the familiar campsites. In your heart that stud in Benckelo has quite a big say.

  The stable had been expanded over the years. It wasn’t long before Joseph decided to buy two beautiful star mares in addition to the geldings that still worked on the land and have them covered by thoroughbreds. He made snap decisions. Because Lucie thought her husband was wonderful and because her view of breeding was scarcely any different from his, she usually smiled in agreement. Her father appreciated his son-in-law too. Fifteen hundred guilders for a foal was a lot at the beginning. Concrete was laid on the stable floor. Almost immediately it struck Joseph as a good idea to breed from the Gelderland broodmare, Nelaleen. This turned out to be fortunate. From a natural coupling with the thoroughbred Furioso his darling Bellaheleen was born. The offspring of opposed breeds like this is called an FI product. There is an excellent chance of good qualities. Bellaheleen was a jumper with strength from her mother’s line and a paternal infusion of courage. After crossing with a couple of Prussian Trakehners which had a very good pedigree, she produced daughters with a rare bent for jumping.

  Days are long in a stud. From six in the morning Joseph trains his horses by putting them in front of a cart and riding them at a gallop along the country roads. Sim, rain, pheasants flying up. He doesn’t maintain that the lunge is useless, but it’s better for their condition if you make animals work hard and use their backs. He shouts, whistles, his method sends shivers down their spine. He doesn’t mind hitting them — he is held in high esteem by them. For sixteen years Joseph has been dropping in at the stables on winter evenings to talk to the horses and to explain a few things to them.

  In 1964 when he comes home he is handed his son Hanzi. In 1967, deeply moved, he counts the ten perfectly formed toes of Katharina. Two years later there is Koos, who is given the Gypsy name of Jojo. Joseph loves his children. He cherishes them, lifts them up, rocks them. He puts one of them on his lap at the end of the day: The stove is burning, the little one starts nodding off, Joseph looks from the bare linden trees behind the window to the little head slumped against his chest. His eyes grow moist. These are the moments, aren’t they? These are the moments when paternal love takes such hold in you that you can leave, you can go where you like while your mind remains alert to all that is essential. Yes, you’re lucky. You can laugh to your heart’s content because here are the three children. They urge you on. On you go. Have you ever felt so cheerful?

  And it’s just the same with Lucie. Your most carefree destination is this woman, and your everyday love life never becomes drudgery because it starts again every autumn. She cooks. You repair the tractor. She makes coffee. You make a window in the stable door to provide fresh air and put some netting in it to stop birds flying in. In the alder wood behind the orchard she sees a footprint in the snow. You sink to your haunches, you grab her hand, they are the pads of a fox, your fingers slip along the inside of her wrist. Every month there are days when she looks a little paler than usual. You look past her out the window. The cycle of the woman’s body is something you don’t want to hear about, you turn your back on her in bed. Returning from the village, she has a wrinkle of annoyance between her eyes. There’s a good chance that she has met a fellow villager whom for some unknown reason she doesn’t like one bit. That’s why, to cheer Lucie up, you always call the owner of Second Eden “that cow,” “that bitch,” or “that prickly cunt.”

  On the kitchen table there are onions and carrots from the garden. She has poured tea and looks at you with her usual smile. Her eyes stare at you unmovingly: Only with her, Joseph, only with her can you talk! Having somehow drifted imperceptibly into your stories, for God’s sake, she’s the only one who knows what you’re talking about. And it’s been like that from the very beginning. From the first time you arrived here, she realized who you were, and subsequently she’s realized it another fifteen times. It was only this summer that a few things went wrong.

  * * *

  Of course, I bumped into her after all. It was in Italy, in the eastern area of the hills near Tolmezzo. I’d been feeling tired. I felt an inappropriate and malicious pleasure in drowsing and sleeping, and that had never been my way. That evening in the campsite near Tolmezzo I was sitting by my car when someone said to me: “Look out, the kumpania of Parasja and her family has parked by the water this afternoon. Past the western side of the site there is a branch of the Tagliamento that cuts through a luscious plain with blue skies and green fields.”

  “Very good, friend,” I said. “Thanks for the news.” I even hesitated to look up.

  I was quite simply too drowsy that evening. Later too, when the fires were lit, I kept my distance from the world of real emotions. I saw her a little way off, dealing with her children, an energetic, majestically blossoming woman. Once I’d seen heaven in her eyes. Now all she made me think to do was to bend over and poke the embers with a eucalyptus branch.

  The night only got going when some of them began singing. After supper. With all the stars in the sky. Two men tried out their voices, softly at first, in the usual way, but soon they rose to piercing heights. And then, God yes, then pain came out of the far distance of my soul. A sense of drama, things like this can happen when they start singing in these tones. The hands clapping, these eyes closed. And then a deathly silence. What did this night mean? The voices set me thinking, far beyond thought itself. They brought with them a certain understanding. But what that night had to tell me was not about this or that woman. To
be honest, even in those couplets there was something that kept me from remembering them. Then, great seriousness and fate being decided, more or less. If I started my car the following morning and drove away from the camp on the banks of the Tagliamento, it was because the music the night before had sung to me so convincingly The emptiness. To seize life wholeheartedly even as it is changing, therefore the emptiness. What the night had decided would henceforth be the order of the day.

  I couldn’t care less.

  The way back went smoothly, but I remained listless and uninterested. Beyond Verona I camped for a day by the lake. At a campsite in the Val d’Aosta I spent three days taking apart and putting back together a diesel engine for a chap from Albania. He was a drunkard. I didn’t like him. I didn’t know why I helped him. When he pushed the bottle toward me, I refused with a growl. Around Mulhouse I headed directly north.

  In Holland it was still full summer. Green doors, gardens, linden trees with crowns spread out in front of the houses. When I drove through Benckelo I noticed that I’d run out of cigarettes. I stopped opposite the supermarket. When I got out, a woman I knew stopped on the other side of the road. “Hey! Joseph!” she shouted. It was Christina Cruyse of Second Eden. A truck came between us. I waited. When I crossed the street she was still standing there. What was that woman looking at? What did she want? Was she trying to give me the evil eye?

  3

  Damn, there he is! Yes, it’s him. He’s back. Summer’s more or less over and his lordship is going home. If you ask me, he’s quite early this year. What date is it today? September 2, the sun is still warm. Look, he’s stopping. He parks his filthy car by the curb opposite the Konmar. His windshield is covered in flies — he’s come a long way. Isn’t he in a hurry? No particular kind of impatience now he’s so close to her? I can just see her reaction when she hears that typical eight-cylinder whoosh in her yard: a smile, quick, disbelieving. That’s all. And happiness, of course. Well, I’ve got a nice surprise for her in my field, too, a very nice one, I’m sure of that, which will make something flare up in her face — that innocent face that is equally pale in winter and summer — a longing. And she’ll come to me whether she wants to or not. She detests me. She distrusts me. I’m going to supply the Appaloosa to her. I’m really dying to offer the mare calmly for sale to her, at quite a good price. But now her husband’s suddenly on the other side of the street!

  I call him. I think he looks in my direction but I can’t see properly because a truck drives past. Why do I call him? What do I want with him?

  God knows.

  “Hello,” I say when he’s crossed the street.

  He greets me with a nod, his black hat on his head, and is about to go into the Konmar. It’s six on the dot.

  “Listen, Joseph, can I ask your advice about one of my horses?”

  “Got to buy some cigarettes first.”

  “Have one of mine. Here.”

  I don’t let him go. I present my packet to him. “It’s about a mare that does nothing but sweat and sweat.”

  When he’s lit up, he looks at me dubiously. His skin is dark with the sun. I can see silver hairs in his mustache. I realize that I’m impressed by his proud patience. To my original desire another begins to attach itself.

  “A brilliant mare too,” I go on lamenting. “Really, a super jumper and I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  The Appaloosa and the Gypsy start to merge, to become one, I can feel that. I deliberately breathe in the smell of his cigarette. Could I get him to come with me?

  “How long has she had that?” he now asks.

  “Since yesterday, Joseph. The day before she was perfectly fit.”

  “What did you make her do? Has she been near strange horses, by any chance?”

  “That’s just it. A week ago she was still with the dealer.”

  He frowns. Does it interest him? Or does he want to be on his way? It’s very likely that he’s tired.

  “A quality horse,” he says. “That shivers and sweats.”

  I nod. “Yes. A mare with stunningly beautiful lines. You won’t believe your eyes, really not. But she’s shivering.”

  He looks past me into Brinkstraat. I go on talking.

  “I don’t know if it means anything to you, but she’s a daughter of the Bavarian champion Cesare.”

  Again I seek out, asking openly now, the already more interested look of Lucie’s husband. Just back from abroad. Still full of God knows what impressions, but definitely intending to turn left at the end of Brinkstraat and under the tunnel. Has she been looking forward to this moment for the whole summer? He pushes his hat back a little. Has she already imagined how he’ll come slinking back?

  “Listen,” I say, “you know about these things. Got any ideas?”

  Soon he’ll be given a roof over his head as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a floor under his feet and a wide bed with a freckly white woman who spreads her hair out over her pillow like a fan at night, I imagine.

  “It might be glanders,” he says, “or heaves. You haven’t said if she has a temperature.”

  Red hair, which he may like, but which long ago I saw as something intolerable, something completely unacceptable that in some way she would have to pay for.

  Pulling it loose was the last thing you thought of, in those days, when it was wound around her head in long braids. Snapping at her and making fun of her was also obvious — the whole group of you turning your backs on her when she came into the playground. And then putting your heads together and bursting out laughing. Or making faces as if you were dying of the stench. She kept seeking our company and particularly mine! Didn’t she realize that we couldn’t stand the sight of her? Her idiotic bolt-upright way of walking, her watery eyes, her bright yellow eyelashes, very long too, her impudent habit of standing near us in gym lessons as if she were one of us and came to visit us on Saturday afternoons. She was stupid. She slept with her mouth open during lessons. When we played tag-with-a- ball no one wanted to pick her. Didn’t she realize that her breasts, which were beginning to ripen, were just begging for her to be tripped, or to have her heels stepped on? One time another girl and I laughed at her sweetly and took her with us to Meulink’s stable. Come on, the three of us will go up the ladder, we said, we’ve got candy in the hay. We climbed up a bit and then I stood with my back against the rung and looked into the sty where the pigs were. Filthy as hell. Look, we said, and pushed her over the wall into the pen. Yes, then it’s indescribable — your mood, your happy mood which swells up to the farthest corners of the stable. She’s lying in the black shit and gasping for breath. There are threads of spittle coming out of her mouth. It’s impossible to describe how it feels to be standing watching, blond and clean, high up on the ladder.

  Patiently, almost lovingly, determined to put one over On her, I say, “Temperature? I don’t know, Joseph. I haven’t taken it, but I don’t think so.”

  Now a narrow smile. His face takes on a mocking expression, and I quite like that.

  “So the wonderful pedigree mare is letting her head drop,” he says.

  I laugh too. “What?”

  “So she’s letting her head hang?” he repeats. “I bet she puts her hind legs far apart and walks with short steps.”

  Now I must nod seriously in agreement. To get full value out of this summer day, and to get the very special surprise from it that at the end is clearly in it, I have to put a faithful “yes” in my eyes, with a dash of respect.

  “Exactly,” I nod. “It really is just as you say.” I gesture toward his car. Mine is right in front of it. Go on, another prod, it’s going well, isn’t it?

  “Hey, Joseph!” I sweep my hair back. “Drive behind me if you’ve got time. Have a look at the horse and give me some advice, please!”

  His reply sounds flat.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  We go into the field. Cesare’s daughter is standing right over on the left by the wooded bank. />
  “That’s her.”

  Of course I know perfectly well what’s wrong with the mare.

  “You can see what a beauty she is.”

  He strolls one step ahead of me with his shoulders hunched and says nothing.

  Yes, I believe he’s tired. I see these things. His lordship is rather weak. Bet he’s driven a long stretch in one go and he’s now just as light in the head as a trained jumper after a round. As a horsewoman I know that, as a true show jumper. What do you think, Joseph? What do you want? Look at me!

  He looks at the high-legged horse. He could of course say, Put her in the stable and be sure not to give her anything to eat, but it’s as though he has seen through the pretext. Absentmindedly he pats the pied nose of the horse. In the distance a dog barks, the evening air is still warm, and a certain idea begins to entice him, to convince him, but he’s not completely sure yet.

  “What do you plan to do with her?” he asks.

  “Sell her on.” I now gaze at him openly.

  “Have you got anyone in mind?”

  “Oh yes!” I nod with an enthusiasm that fits effortlessly with the simply precious atmosphere of the moment. “It’s all fixed.”

  He still doesn’t come a step closer, but his eyes are certainly not dull anymore. Sensing that I want him, his smile goes from me to the horse, he touches the light red, too-dry nostrils. Feel like an unexpected treat?

  “I know someone who’s been thinking of nothing else but an Appaloosa all summer,” I say.

  I squirm inwardly with pleasure and turn around. Having agreed in principle, let’s say, we walk side by side in the direction of the two high rows of trees in front of my house.