B007P4V3G4 EBOK (55 page)

Taking turns, the hunters bore along a dirty, linen sack. Inside it,
they were transporting the stone head of Saint Hieronymus of
Noordwijk which they had won on the way, gambling. The sack
was heavy and stank of fish. Occasionally, they would have to rest
because their fingers were becoming cramped with all that lugging.
Yet, they would get up each time again and not forget the sack.
Though they did not want to take the sack along, they actually did
so.

The loose slopes slipped away beneath their feet. In vain they
sought to gain a hold on the weeds that shot loose, on the prickly
thorn bushes and dead tree branches.

Only when the sky darkened and the storm arose, in wild gusts
which made the dune sand fly up, did they notice that, by God,
they did not know where they were.

They halted near a weathered enclosure because they had seen
its woodwork before, but when that had been and which way they had then gone at the time, this failed to spring to mind. So they
stood there, indecisive, near that little fence in the wilderness while
the storm battered the dunes and lightning flashed in the distance.
It surprised them that there was no shelter anywhere: just now it
was beginning to hail and sandstorms made further progress
impossible. In his mind, each of them cursed the others, but himself
as well, because he had gone along with them, off to nowhere. As
well as they could, they hid behind the fence, the hacked-off head
of the saint between them. Because of the wet, the sack had begun
to stink even more and now their dress coats, too, smelled of fish.
The dogs were in a panic and howled in desperation. The hunters
were hardly worried at all, as nothing serious had ever happened
to them. In their heads still hummed the boasting of a while ago:
of hunts on the manor of so-and-so, and of women with doe's eyes
who were soft and plump like rabbits. Rolled up tight, their faces
in the hollows of their arms, they let the tempest pass over them
and they did not notice that the plumes on their hats had snapped.

The storm raged terribly. A little further on, lightning struck
and a hamlet disappeared in its entirety in the roaring, spitting
flames. At sea, fishing smacks were engulfed by tidal waves and
the boats on the beach, too, had disappeared, for there was no
longer any beach there. Already the sea was swirling over the top
of the first dunes. The hunters were oblivious. They lay there,
huddled behind the fence, and were too far away to hear the bells
of Noordwijk-op-Zee raising the alarm.

Around them, gusts of wind sliced away at the dunes and thus
freed a path for the flood.

It lasted too long to the hunters' taste. It was already late and they
wished to be home before dark. They were also worried about the
dogs which they had not seen for a while now. And when the storm
abated for a moment, they crawled out and stood upright. No mean
thing: their joints were stiff and their heads ached with stabbing
pains. They were cold and their sodden clothing itched on their
bodies. After bickering a bit about the they would
not leave it behind after were on their way, sack and all.

First, they had to climb the dunes to see where in fact they
actually were. The sand was loose and heavy, giving their unsteady
legs support. But before they had reached the top, a brusque,
heavy gust of wind forced them to lie down.

Flat on their bellies they crawled along and thus they reached
the highest point.

Perhaps they might better have stayed behind their fence, for
what they saw did not improve their prospects. It was not just the
sea which was all around them and foamed at the mouth like the
prophecies of Isaiah, rising and lighting up beneath the darkened
heavens, but it was that beast in particular, fearfully large and near,
so large and awe-inspiring that it seemed almost
regarded them and gave a leering grin at so much insignificance. It
was not clear what they could do, for behind them, too, was the
sea. The fact of the matter was, you might say, that the sea was
had only failed to reach where they were. It was curious, too - and
this only dawned on them slowly - that their case was a hopeless
one. There was indeed a fishing smack floating in their direction,
but before they had had a chance to see it properly, it was
smashed to pieces by the waves.

The dune held up for quite a while still, and because it lasted so
long the hunters got up hope. The biblical creature came no closer,
though it did not go away either. Now and then, it submerged as
if to hoodwink the hunters, and then it rose up again revealing its
immense back. It seemed to the hunters that the beast was the
instigator of the violence of the sea. It appeared to smash down on
the waves with its tail and that way propel their surge. Occasionally
it would open its jaws and they could see a disgusting tongue of
flesh. Possibly, were they able to kill it, the fateful tempest would
cease - and the water would return to the sea and they would be
able to continue on their way through the dunes. But the hunters
had never shot anything larger than a deer and they feared that
the beast, once struck, would only burst forth in fury. Still, they
grabbed for their field bags and wanted to load their guns. The
gunpowder was wet, however, and they did not even make the
attempt.

They thought they would soon be eaten this set
them off crying. The hunters wept, their bellies shaking, and they
barely noticed that the flood swept over them.

The sack with the saint's head, too, disappeared into the depths
of darkness.

2

When morning was approaching, the storm had died down and a
haze of light began to dawn beneath the low, heavy sky, the Admiral set out with a number of other fishermen to take in the
damage on the beach. Their clothes were soaked and they were
freezing with cold. They had little hope that there would be
anything left of their little vessels, but they were relieved to be
able to flee from the devastated hamlet. Its eight hovels had all
been wrecked and had then collapsed. The women were now busy
bandaging wounds with wet, stinking rags. Others took pity on
the horse that during the lightning had got into a panic and had
broken its legs. They had heard the creature all night but it merely
trembled now. Someone sliced its neck open and allowed the
blood to drain into the sand. While the horse was still convulsing,
people began to cut off the meat in strips.

In the distance they heard the bells of Maria-ter-Zee, tolling for
All Souls.

The Admiral thought of the candles that would be burning there
and how those lights would make the gold, silver and brass gleam,
with sparkles shooting up so that it seemed as if you had tears in
your eyes, and the saints, too, had tears in their eyes - tears of
sadness, but also because things had ended well, after all. The
Admiral no longer attended chapel: he was one of the new faith.
He walked with God. The new faith did not gleam: it was dull and
black and resigned, like a funeral cortege. Thus, head bent, he
walked with God through the gruesomeness of life. Yet it alarmed
him that the chapel which had likewise been built of wood had not
been sent to perdition during the tempest. He walked out ahead of
the men and was silent. They, too, were silent: they preferred not
to have their forebodings confirmed.

The coast was beyond all recognition. The flood had forced the
water to surge deep inland. Dunes had caved in and been swept
away, and on the flattened remains they found the blue pulp of
dead jelly fish. The fishing smacks were nowhere to be seen. For
that matter, there was not a sail in sight on the entire sea. It lay
grey and empty in the morning light. They could have gone back
now but they walked on, in the direction of Noordwijk-op-Zee.

Ahead of them cantered the Admiral's little son. The humpbacked lad, commonly called the Humpkin, rose and dipped from
dune to dune as if he was trying to escape from the little dune on
his back. The Admiral was revolted by that little hump which had
sent his wife to her death. He was revolted by that simple little lad
that had been born from death - with its little-old-man's-head it
had waited between blood-soaked thighs to see whether it would be allowed to live. The Admiral had not known what to do. He
had taken his fishknife and fetched the mite in a gush of blood.
There was nothing else he could have done: it had been that hump
that had stuck in the mother's womb. Nobody had taken against
him for this but he had turned dour precisely because nobody had
made him take the blame - and he hated fate, a fate that was
indifferent and took his beautiful young wife from him and provided an ugly hump in her place.

Humpkin, meanwhile, tripped on ahead and seemed to have no
notion of the burden weighing down on his shoulders. It was the
father who was weighed down.

For years now, the Admiral was being undermined by doubt
which had rendered him taciturn and evasive. The fishermen took
this to be gruffness and believed that their boss thought himself to
be too high and mighty for them; they did not know that inner
confusion and despair were what impeded his sociability. He had
thoughts he could not utter so they continued to wheel about in
his head without encountering contradiction. They dragged him
along and left him stranded, not knowing the way.

Where he was lost, there it was writ that God had taken the
truth away from the world and had set hope in its place.

The doubt had been sown in the days that preachers of the new
faith had come to smash up the idolatrous statuary. Their word
seemed true and the misdeeds of the false church appeared terrible
to him. But when they had entered the convent garden of Saint
Barbara, he had hesitated - and from then on he would continue to
hesitate. It had been a languid summer's afternoon and nightingales
were singing in the shrubbery. He was touched by the industrious
plenty and peace that reigned in this garden. The herbs in their
trimmed borders, the flower beds, the hum around the bee hives, the
tuneful chatter of birds in the orchard - these were all there and it
was good that this was so, for it was beautiful and devoid of people.
The convent walls were cloaked in clouds of vine and honeysuckle,
and in front of the convent stood shady lime trees. He knew he
ought not to be there; he smelled how the scent of flowers, herbs
and ripe fruit were being driven out by the smell of fish steaming
from him in the afternoon warmth. Behind his back he felt the men's
presence spread out. A cloud slid in front of the sun - but it was as
though it were their shadow passing, chill and sombre, over the
convent garden. Lizards slipped by past their feet; startled birds
fanned out into the sky. Rustling everywhere, and snapping twigs.

It befell him that his feet were booming through the convent
corridors and that his eyes saw the idols break. There was baying
and screaming and the shattering of glass. The fishermen chased
after the sisters, down corridors and up staircases, sanctity crunching beneath their feet. He stood in the chapel among the wrecked
prayer stools, tom altar cloths, among the shards and powdered
rubble. There he stood and he recognised the head of the saint of
Noordwijk who looked at him and did not seem to understand all
this either.

He felt a draught rush by, past his ankles, slipping away through
a crack.

He had thought to rescue the saint by taking him with him.
Often he had prayed to him when God was wrathful and made the
waves foam. He knew Hieronymus was an idol and at the same
time he knew that it was sacrilegious to touch a saint with one's
own hands. He knew he was doing wrong, no matter what. But
was this going to make him leave it lying there, defenceless, and
wait for the others to trample it to dust?

He didn't have much time to think, for a moment later fire
roared up from the thatched roof and smoke billowed through the
corridors.

He wrapped the head in a strip of altar cloth and slipped away
through a smashed window in the sacristy.

From then on, he had kept the head in a cupboard, together
with his wife's worthless paraphernalia.

He wondered whether it had been wrong to take only the head.
Possibly the torso was roaming about somewhere, haunting, soulless. But he had not seen the torso lying anywhere. Now, that
head was lying on its side on a shelf as if it was a hunk of cheese
or some kind of hat. It was the preposterousness which worried
him, and he became convinced, by and by, that he had done
something irreparable, something only to be atoned for by punishment. Though, indeed, he had converted to the new faith, he
feared that God would take but little notice of that. The wayside
preacher had said that He 'shall expunge from the land the names
of idols, that they be thought no more'. And yet the head of Saint
Hieronymus lay in his cupboard and each day he would think of
him. And each night, when fear rattled at the shutters and groaned
quietly in the wood of his alcove bedstead, he feared both
retribution and vengeance.

Then - -se three gents, those simpletons had knocked at his door and they had got themselves drunk on the brandy he had
sold them too dearly. The Admiral loathed such gents because
they gave him the feeling that everything about him was wrong.
They made him envious and caused him to feel sad for all he was
not and would not become. The way they sat there on the
wooden bench, with their boots of burnished leather and those
hands gesturing you-know-what - it gave the Admiral satisfaction
to ply them with brandy until their tongues writhed helplessly like
fish on dry land. To frighten them, he had taken the head of Saint
Hieronymus from the cupboard, but he himself had become afraid;
the gents were not startled, on the contrary: they, with their
rotund little turns, had had to laugh uncontrollably and wished
most insistently to cast dice for 'that patron saint of brandy
drinkers'. The Admiral wondered whether perhaps they were of
the new faith that they dared mock a saint in so carefree a manner.
And his loathing grew the greater because they seemed so at
home with higher things and were not afraid at all, as if they had
been able to strike a deal, somehow, with up-above.