B007P4V3G4 EBOK (53 page)

'My poor she repeated and at once she pressed his
hand tenderly. Why art thou so imprudent to display thyself to
the people when thou hast taken too much wine7'

The king did not defend himself for he did not wish to speak to
her of his doubt, but when the queen had departed he called for
the old Councillor of State who had been his first teacher. To him
he confessed his adventures. And the old Councillor said:

'I, too, after the full, carefree years of my youth, have attempted
in the first period of reflection to assay my self-worth. By appearances I sought to give myself more esteem, but life taught me that
we are what we are; never more, never less, and it taught me that,
by wishing to achieve more than one is able to, one can only
succeed in humiliating oneself.

'Thou art called king, but thou canst not elevate thyself to royal
kingship through acts of outward display.

Time shall pronounce judgement.

'Be thyself, and if thou art of royal quality this shall be evident by
thy true deeds. When thou sought'st to bring reality to the realm of
appearances, thou wast ridiculous. Ridiculous, too, wast thou when
thou sought'st to hand victory to appearances in real life.

'Should the actor, acclaimed and lauded as make-believe king in
the realm of make-believe reality, wish to play the same part in the
real world, he would be as preposterous as thou wast on his stage.

'This is the first pre-condition for he who wishes to be a
balanced human being and seeks to make a success of his life: ask
not the why of things, accept the things the way they are, and act
simply, with honest conviction, according to circumstances:

When, after a year had past, the king had grown calm again, he
ordered Karel de Man's theatrical company to attend court.

The celebrated artiste came at once and was received in special
audience. The star, who now acted very modestly, barely dared
look up at the monarch, but when he did so his eyes acquired a
deeply thoughtful expression.

'Tell us what you are thinking,' said the king. We demand that
you should tell.'

'Your Majesty,' was the hesitant reply, I thought of a ...
forgive me, pray, Your Majesty; I once knew a rich man who
believed himself capable of personifying a king. He resembled
Your Majesty so much that at first

'And was he regal?'

'Begging Your Majesty's pardon, he was an upstart Mr Average.
Only his face resembled yours but in his manner, bearing and
expressions he was annoying, but conceited he was to
a high degree.'

'Are you quite sure we were not that man?'

The actor grew fearful of having said too much.

He stammered: No, Your Majesty ... for I should recognise
you amongst thousands by the majesty of your person.'

And the king gleaned from his eyes that he was speaking the
truth.

That evening, Karel de Man acted in his most powerful play
but, though giving the best he was capable of, he could not
manage to make more of it than a modest success.

That same governor who once had applauded him warmly, that
same mayor who had ridiculed the king, those same dignitaries
who had praised him once loudly, thought him, now they knew
themselves to be in the king's presence, a ridiculous prince.

The king has thought at length about these contradictions, but
he has never reached any clarity in the matter.

Jan Siebelink

In his mind, he imagined that the little room filled itself with the
racket of his revolver blazing away, that cracks ran like dark rivers
through the glass of the mirror and that both of them, he and the
woman, fell apart in shards ... With a smile on his serious,
contorted face, he listened to the reverberation of the tumult
above their destroyed bodies which had remained intact nevertheless. The smile vanished, his hand slid along the bedspread hanging
down to the ground, sweat forced its way out from his forehead.

A few years ago, Van Baak had entered an ironmonger's shop and
had stood a long time looking at a showcase sealed with a padlock,
at the rear of the shop, in which firearms of many kinds were
displayed. He had just made his so-manieth visit to the sexologist
... 'Allow your imagination to wander a bit, let it do the real work,
and do take plenty of He knew in advance that it wouldn't
work out, but the doctor acted very busy, made telephone calls,
rinsed bottles, walked to and fro, washed his hands at length: all
actions undertaken with the intention of distracting him so he would
not get the feeling that the doctor was waiting for him, was
expecting something from him. His mind had to be trained 'lightly'
on the sex act, so 'lightly' in fact that the success of that act would
not seem of the slightest importance ... 'Close your eyes! It
stimulates the imagination and gives you But he did not
close his eyes; from behind the plastic curtain he followed with
revulsion the grotesque shadow of the doctor; that particular time he
got an erection; its cause did not lie in the evocation of the sharply
defined image of a lascivious woman. The busy doctor irritated him
boundlessly. Chill anger crept up inside him; if I had a revolver now,
he suddenly thought, I'd wrench open the curtain and then, him, I'd
... Calmly, he slid open the curtain; the doctor turned round, smiled,
rubbed his hands and said: 'You see: perseverance's the thing!' With
his index finger he tested the hardness; Van Baak looked at the nail
which was smooth and pink with fine spots of calcium.

'Splendid!' the doctor added. But under the caressing finger and
the approving gaze, his sex withered.

And he had gone for a walk in town, right hand in the pocket of
his unbuttoned raincoat, finger on the trigger - in reality he was
clenching the key to his front he an uninterrupted hail of grey bullets ... he felt himself grow strong, a
strange power seemed to take possession of him, the sombreness
in his life was solved at a he even had to restrain himself
from dancing a few the disdainful expression on her face
would disappear. The trick, discovered just now, did not turn out a
success; he could riddle her with bullets, shoot like a daemon: in
vain.

He never could have imagined that something like this would
happen to him. Even as a boy he had been convinced that terrible
afflictions lay in wait to assail his body; he was forty-two: anything
was to be expected at that age and gratitude was a fitting thing for
each day without pain. Thus, he had been prepared for many
things - not for this. He well remembered that evening when it
had gone wrong for the first time; he blamed it on the combination
of tiredness and booze, and her discovery, too - he could not deny
this - of an entire year's worth of 'Knock-knock, knockers', the bigboobs mag, underneath a folder of bills in his desk drawer; and
shortly afterwards she had come into his room (a blush of shame
rose to his cheeks again) and he had not been able to stuff the
booklet out of sight quickly enough; it had fallen from his trousers,
down in front of her 'I'm the one watching every penny -
Sir buys expensive, filthy little books ...' They lived in a small
place near Utrecht. She worked for social services in Amsterdam,
visited broken homes, rang up ever more frequently to say that the
consultation was running over time, that she wasn't coming home,
and in the end she moved in with a man she had helped with his
divorce. In letters she wrote from time to time another reproach
came to the fore. That they had remained childless was his fault.
The sexologist had once confided to her that his semen was too
meagre.

It would happen that he would lean in town against a lamppost,
right hand in his coat pocket, and that for a moment he was really
of a mind to buy himself a firearm, but people had looked at him
so penetratingly and he'd hurried off into the suburbs. He would
never buy a firearm, and that moment of repentance had given him
childlike pleasure because he was mild-mannered by nature, but particularly because he could now give his imagination free rein if
need be; without danger, he could observe all the effects of a shot
fired, down to the last detail, as his whim dictated.

He became a regular visitor to the house boats on the Zandpad.
Most of the prostitutes knew him alright: always carefully dressed,
but never without an unbuttoned beige raincoat.

The noise had sunk away into the drab bedspread. Except for the
woman who, sighing, moved her leg, it was quiet inside. Outside,
birds uttering sharp cries flew in across the water; in dense swarms
they would dive, over the road situated higher up, over the fence
in the verge, rotting away, over a crumbling wall - the last
remains of a little farm - down into the depths where the fields
began and faded away, further on, to a dead plain with a block of
flats under construction.

The mirror. with blister marks was the sole luxury in this bare,
repulsive room; he turned his head and his eye fell on a poster
depicting a naked woman in a curious vaulting position. At one
time, the walls had been papered; the remnants were still stuck to
the faded, badly fitted slats. On the table by the door stood a table
lamp without a shade and a portable radio; he heard the birds
again and he pressed himself up against the woman; with his head
held to one side he could continue to see the shine that gave a
depressing intimacy to the room - the fo'c'sle in fact. Under the
lamp lay two twenty-five-guilder notes.

It was always asked for immediately upon coming in. Van Baak
had adopted the habit of taking the money from his wallet in
advance and to come in with the money clearly visible, mumbling,
half-stooping, as if he had just found it on the path that led steeply
down from the road to the boat. The money he was holding in his
hand wasn't even his! And now those notes were lying there just
so, brightly lit under the lamp, he could barely remember having
put them there. Of course, his behaviour was very childish, but this
playing with illusion had become a necessity to him.

There was a further advantage connected with this course of
action. What he was holding in his hand was the sum he wished to
spend. He had no more for that evening. In order to answer the
call, financially, of this increasingly compelling 'extravagance', he
had to draw cash more and more frequently. Van Baak was an
averagely paid white-collar worker.

It was quiet outside now, too; the boat rocked and in that moving silence he expected, any moment now, that the woman
would let fly at him. He would get in there first: he turned his face
towards her, almost closed his eyes and said: 'It won't work.' He
raised himself and leant on his arms.

'Don't give up so soon.' The eyes beneath slate-blue eyebrows
in the thin face had a friendly expression. He heard the birds
outside again; in the dusk they would be gleaming black and
round; birds or people, in great numbers they were always terrifying. He had never been inside this woman's place. He always took
a great deal of time to take his pick, but today the chattering
creatures flying over so low had frightened him. Without looking,
he had fled in here. He shifted his weight from one arm to the
other, lowered himself beside her, spotted a shallow fold, like an
eager child's mouth, in her neck, and he was moved; his nose
caught the scent of her perfumed hair; he was afraid that he would
have to cough, and he looked in the mirror again, his head in the
hollow of her arm. When the woman was lying down she had
very hunched shoulders too; she breathed heavily; he thought she
had asthmatic bronchitis.

'Come,' the woman said hoarsely.

'It's no good today,' he said. 'I don't need to try: it's because of
the birds.' He lay perfectly motionless, actually expecting that she
would begin to laugh, derisively.

After a good while, she said: 'And you haven't been drinking?'
Her voice was calm; it seemed resilient because of the asthma.

'No.'

'Been working too hard, have you?'

'Yes,' he admitted. 'I'm sorry.'

'When you're tired it's always difficult.'

'I do believe I'm tired,' he said softly and weepily. He raised his
head, stared at the bare wall above the pillow. Her hand stroked
his back; he stretched his legs, laid his head back down on her shoulder.

'Are you nervous?' she asked.

'Yes, I should have stayed home today.'

'You must relax and not think - look at me.' He looked at the
ageless face; she pulled his head towards her, pressed it against
herself; he felt her thin neck and her bony hand slid across his
body. 'It's no good,' he said. 'My eyelids are trembling - I'm tired,
I'm terribly sorry.' She looked him in the face, made a slight
movement, and he thought she shrugged her shoulders.

'I'm restless ... if the birds hadn't been there ... it was just as if
they were coming out of the water: vicious, black creatures. He
acted a bit hard-done-by, made a helpless gesture with his hands.
'You're afraid but don't you go thinking that there's anyone who'll
take any notice of your fear. You, yourself, will have to ...'