B007P4V3G4 EBOK (4 page)

But gradually the purring, too, grows silent. The cat falls asleep
and I am left alone, listening to the ticking: una ex his, necropolis,
una ex his, necropolis.

Thus I continue to doze and it is as though, aboard a fastmoving boat, I am being borne along by splashing waves.

Beneath a dark vaulted expanse that hangs low and oppressive, I
feel myself to be taken along in a wild rush. Far ahead of me shines
a spot of light in which an old skeleton with a leering grin shakes
its bony limbs and, full of rage, shakes a woman's head known to
me, shakes it to and fro by its long, black hair.

Fast and noiselessly I slip towards it and gradually I feel myself
floating

Then I fall in a deep slumber and I continue to sleep until the
lamps are lit and I am called to dine.

Boring and sad, it passes by. I still feel oppressed by the visions
of this afternoon. Afterwards, the same silence again, even more
gloomy because of the light, half turned down.

I go out to take a walk and to forget my visions.

The fierce gusts of rain have made way for a cold, misty drizzle
that falls fine and penetrating. The wind has abated. Slowly, I walk
along the muddy streets and loaf about the backstreets because the
main thoroughfares are too busy and too full of light.

Black and dirty these old houses are, and the few people I meet
look pale like ghosts in the dancing light of the gas lamps that,
because of the wet glass, only shine down on a small radius of the
street.

On the comer of a square stands a trader with his barrow upon
which there are gleaming cheeses, displaying their greasy cut in
the ruddy light of a candle enveloped in a piece of old newspaper.
With a long knife, glinting blue in the light, he pricks small, hard
pieces from a brown-rinded cumin cheese and offers them on the
tip of his knife to bystanders. These, mainly women, look threadbare in their dirty, faded white or purple jackets and their black,
ravelled skirts, soiled with mud spatters both fresh and old. Time
and again, the trader lets out a raucous cry that dies away in the dark street and lures no buyers, and that still reaches me when I
am already so far away that I only see the yellow-red gleam of his
lantern. I walk beside a dark, narrow canal. The warehouses
standing here and there among the well-kept houses stand out
black against the lighted windows surrounding them.

I pause in front of a big house. A slow, plunky little tune with a
melancholy three-four time in the left hand is being played on a
piano. The hoarse, muffled cry of the shady, winter radish trader
who makes his progress, almost invisible, along the water's edge,
commending his sombre wares in a sepulchral voice, makes me
start. The ting-tonging of the piano and that cry of winter radish
reminds me of my youth, of evenings, long gone by, in a spacious
room, warm and cosily lit, with grave, old furniture. We children
are sitting around the table opposite my mother who reads stories
aloud to us from a book. I hear again the tale of the dog who was
shot by his master because he was faithful, and I see myself
weeping with childish sorrow again, suddenly to change to laughter
because of the cries of the winter-radish man which resound
gloomily in the hallway through the little open hatch in the door.

I walk on, through the narrow, winding, filthy little alleys and
along different, narrow canals. I walk past turbulent, black factories
whose chimneys angrily store smoke and flames in the misty air.

I reach a vastly long, broad street with tall houses, old and
dilapidated. I meet hardly anyone except, now and again, for small
gangs of workmen returning from work who stomp through
puddles and mud, talking loudly, suddenly to disappear into a little
drinking parlour, the open door of which casts a bright strip of
light across the wet paving stones. Mournfully, the smoking
paraffin lamps in the little shops light up the gleaming stripes and
the black, rotting fascia boards.

I walk down this sad street for a long time before I reach the
end. I cross a bridge and sit myself down on a pile of planks at the
water's edge, to rest.

The rain has ceased and slowly the mist hanging over the canal
disperses.

Repeatedly, the moon emerges from among the clouds that
break apart and close again, and all is still, quiet and lacklustre.

Before me, I see the dark water restlessly rattling its black little
waves on towards the darkness beyond the city.

When I have been sitting a while I hear a quiet rustling and I see
a thin, wet little dog sniffing about in the load of shavings on which I have put my feet. What's the matter, little one?' And I
pick up the little dog and put it down beside me. It lies down on
my coat and I hear a hard, heavy little tail wagging against the
planks. The little dog presses itself tightly against me to get warm
and, stroking him, I feel his ribs through his skin that hangs limp
from the protruding bones. The wagging abates and I hear by the
quietening breathing that he is gradually falling asleep, and while
I continue to stroke him, involuntarily, I stare ahead of me along
the road I have travelled, on the one side, and the great, dark
expanse on the other side of the bridge. In the long, gloomy street,
a flickering light here and there, I see my life as I have lived it,
without variety and without joy. My youth at a great distance, as
far away as the factory with its rising flames that disappear into
the darkness; from there on not a single bright spot, nothing but
monotonous darkness with here and there a shadowy glimpse; and
on the other side of the bridge I see my future, darker still than my
past and my present, one huge dark expanse, impenetrably black,
on to which a pale moon tries to shed some light, in vain.

The water rattles on continually in restless waves and disappears
into the black expanse.

I stare at my future for a long time. Timorously, a shaft of light
falls through the rending clouds and lights a stretch of the water
with a blue-green sheen. It is not large, the part I see lit up - it
disappears and comes again.

Suddenly I see an ill-defined shape loom up from the dark and
move slowly up and down in the light-green dusk.

Softly bobbing up and down, it remains on the shadowy spot
and I see further shapes join it, vague in outline like the first. When
I look properly, I recognise those who were with me and who
have been gone a long time now.

They disappear and make way for others, more sharply drawn
and more clearly recognisable.

I see those who are with me, compliant and motionless, one
with calm features, the other with distorted ones. They are dead;
along with them, others arise from the dark waters and float across
the clear spot, and beyond it they disappear into the black future.

They come from all sides, thronging together, corpse to corpse,
pressed closely more.

Gradually, the spot becomes deserted as before and I am still
staring down, motionless as ever, on the water rattling by.

Again something rises up from the dark water towards the gleaming shine. A head, a single head, the same one I saw today,
with the thick, black hair hanging sodden and tangled around the
temples and with the long, dark lashes that cast a shadow on the
wax-matt cheeks. And suddenly again I see the old, grinning
skeleton grasp with his rough claw the big, black shock of hair and
shake the head with its pall of suffering, to and fro, in wild fury, so
that the eyes are opened and stare at me with a silent, pleading,
fear-filled gaze.

I am startled by the dog that begins to whine as I grasp hold of
it roughly, and the vision disappears.

Still the water rattles on with its restless black waves. The little
dog drops off to sleep once more, and again I stare down on the
dark waters. But now the luminous spot has gone and there is
nothing but darkness and black around me.

I see myself lying blue and contorted beneath the water where I
am sucked into the mud, soiled and battered, and I follow my own
corpse that bloats and rises to the surface. It snags on a barge
which drags it along over mud and stones; I see how it comes
loose and floats along on the current and how, finally, it is fished
out by a passing boatman. I see the little yellow cart, pushed along
by an indifferent drudge and accompanied by a single police
officer; I see how it rolls along past quiet backwaters where
everyone moves out of the way, revolted, as it passes, how it
continues on its lengthy way one evening and reaches the churchyard.

The rain that slowly has begun to fall shakes me from my
reverie. I take shelter tight against the planks and continue to
drowse.

I see the churchyard, a sunny, warm comer, green with tall grass
sprouting up luxuriantly among which rough thistles and yellow
dandelions grow, quietly rained on by the white petals the may is
sprinkling down. Warm and clear, the glow of the sun radiates
from the crisp blue sky and scorches the leaves of a copper beech
casting a deep shadow over this quiet spot. Humming flies dance
around it, a few white butterflies sway gently to and fro on a tall
ear of grass-seed that, spindly, sticks out above the rest. Repeatedly,
a mild wind rustles through the leaves of the surrounding woods
and makes the little spots of shade dance and intertwine on the
soft, gleaming, green turf. Now and then, a bird perches on the
grey tombstones, hops to and fro for a while on the warm stones and disappears among the quiet twigs. The air trembles, straight
from the soil up to the deep blue of the heavens above.

The rain falls more heavily. The wind blows more strongly
across the dark water.

This has to be the end - and when I get up, for a moment I still
feel the warm breath of the little dog which I have startled from its
sleep and I see all the visions of that entire day pass before me one
more time, the pale head of a woman with the black hair, the dense
throng of corpses; and when they have passed, everything dissolves
into the same grinning old skeleton who, like today, stretches out
his scrawny hand to me.

While I am ready to do that to which everything propels me,
while I already feel the scrawny hand with irresistible grip urge me
toward the dark pool glugging forth wildly in the direction of the
great, black water, whipped up by the wind, while the gloomy cry
of the winter-radish man sounds from the opposite side of the
water, I suddenly see in the sunny spot of the churchyard a
woman, wrinkled with sorrow, who is staring at a raised spot
under which I myself am lying, and I recognise in her my
mother ...

I return home, sadder and gloomier than ever, followed by the
skinny dog who stays close to me and trots along beside me with
a drooping tail.

Jan Arends

It's not just any old day. It's the first of September. What is more,
it's Sunday. And Mr Koopman's birthday. The other gentlemen
have already been up for many hours. The night-duty assistant
began washing at five o'clock this morning. Now, in as far as they
are up and about, they are all wearing their Sunday-best suits and
have already had their breakfast.

Most of them are sitting in the sunlounge. They're smoking or
chewing tobacco. They're quarrelling or looking outside. Not
much to see out there. A dusty patch of lawn. A large horsechestnut that blocks out a lot of light and will be chopped down
this winter. A black-tarred fence.

It's September the first, 1968. But Mr Koopman is still asleep.
He's seventy-nine years old now. It is true that Mr Koopman is the
most difficult gentleman in the home. He's a little senile. But that
doesn't alter the fact that he is contrary in general. He's bad at
obeying and cannot stay in bed at night. When the other gentlemen
are already asleep, he's still scuttling about the ward, turning over
ashtrays still standing there and wastepaper baskets. For he's
addicted to chewing tobacco and this way he sometimes finds an
old chew that has been spat out by one of the other gentlemen.
Four, five times of an evening he has to be tucked back in bed
again.

'Mind you stay in bed, Mr Koopman. Or else it'll be off to the
asylum for you.'

It makes no difference at all.

The moment the ward orderly - who has a further fifty-nine
other gentlemen to bother her head about, after all - has gone to a
different part of the ward, he gets out of bed again. Such trouble
you then have to get the man back in again! And he won't wake
up in the morning. Not with sweet words. Not with threats.
Perhaps a good clout would help. But no slapping is allowed in
this establishment. Barring exceptions, they keep to that here.

But this morning Mr Koopman does not have to wake up early. It's his birthday. On their birthdays the gentlemen are spoilt. All of
them. Mr Koopman too, therefore. And there is no finer day to
have your birthday than Sunday! And September the first, to boot.
And all of nature is festive. To celebrate summer's farewell. There's
dear, sweet sunshine and there's gold in the leaves of the chestnut
tree which will be chopped down this winter.