The blue sky, birds tumbling and calling. Untroubled.
God, I think, You were going to raise me up, You were going to help me. Oh, God, together we were going to perform miracles…
Where his tent stood there is now a square in the grass, a flattened shape of bent stalks and trampled-down flowers, a clearly outlined, life-sized sign. I run over to it and kick my foot into the grass, claw at it, digging, finding nothing but a rusty, bent fork.
Go home, I think, he’ll be waiting along the road, of course.
Winding broadly, the road runs through the summery landscape to Laaxum.
Chapter 8
I move the bar of soap between my hands and then lather my forehead and neck. I look at my face in the slanting little mirror, a normal face with small, tired eyes, sleepy and drained white. I can no longer see traces in it of the anguish, the terror and the despairing rage that seemed to turn my eyes to stone, emptied of tears, hard and dry as if stuck together with clay so that they would not open in the morning.
I can hear voices and footsteps in the cookhouse, the creaking of the pump, and I feel an arm nudging me: ‘Get a move on, it’s our turn.’ I am here and I am not here.
The hard-ridged pattern of the coir matting bores into my feet and the ice-cold water etches tingling spots on my face. I lean closer to the mirror: are there really no tell-tale signs left of my laborious breathing, of the hollows around my eyes, of my panicky distress? I curl my toes and move my feet in little circles over the matting.
When I put my shirt on I feel the flat little place on my chest where his photograph is. I don’t take it out because I know for certain that he will never come back if I look at it now. I must be strong and wait.
At table they all talk and laugh, everything is as usual. I force myself to eat the bread and butter which piles up in my mouth, turning into a solid gag. Take a sip of tea, swallow, work it down, another sip; all is well, no one seems to notice anything. Is okay, Jerome, is good…
Of course he hasn’t left, he is in the village, waiting in the car: suddenly everything inside me lights up and I feel a sense of freedom and relief. He is sitting behind the wheel, waiting for me to come. I must hurry to school before he goes… Come on you lot, get that food down, don’t dawdle, can’t you see I’m waiting, that I’ve been ready for hours? Come along, hurry up, please, before I miss him, do hurry up, I’m in a terrible hurry…
Meint and Jantsje are still a bit sleepy and take their time walking to school through the countryside, breathing in the cool morning air and stillness. They chat and laugh and I feel forced to join in. We stop for a long time beside the twisted body of a dead gull at the side of the road, its rigid claws sticking up into the air. Walt, I think, don’t go away, I’m just coming, I’ll be with you in a moment.
Why don’t I go on ahead, why don’t I run, why do I hang about with them meekly instead? Meint shoves the gull over the edge of the ditch with his clog. ‘It’ll take two weeks to turn into a skeleton,’ he says, ‘we’ll keep on looking every day and see how it happens.’
We walk on, a bit more quickly now, but in my thoughts I am racing ahead, careering up the road, flying to the crossroads, to the church, to the bridge. He is sure to be there, somewhere not far away, my patiently waiting liberator, and everyone will see me step into his car. I shan’t be ashamed, not even when his puts his arm around me. We shall drive off and leave the gaping villagers behind and I shall hold tight to his jacket and never let go again.
At lunch, Mem puts a dish on the table with a gigantic, furiously steaming eel laid out on it. It is pale and shiny and the thick skin has burst open revealing its greasy, white flesh. The smell of fish hangs heavily in the small room, seizing hold of me and clinging to my nostrils, mouth, skin and clothes. I shiver.
Hait slips a long knife along the blue skin, splitting the hideous bicycle tyre into two steaming wet halves. I reluctantly hold out my plate. Hold it, yes, go on…
‘They eat corpses,’ a fisherman in the harbour had once told us with a laugh as he emptied a bucket of squirming eels into a crate. ‘They crawl into anything lying dead at the bottom of the sea and suck it dry.’
It lies steaming on my plate, the potatoes swimming in a white, watery fluid with yellow islands of fat floating on top. Mem is proud of her big fish and looks on anxiously to make sure that Hait has given everyone a good helping; I am going to have to eat it all up or she will be angry.
Walt is suspended upside down in the water, his round, muscular arms relaxed as they float above his head, moving gently in the sea current. He has a wild, distant look in his eyes and a mouth like a fish, wide open, as if he wants to scream. But all sounds have been silenced.
I see a long, coiling fish circling lazily in his head, through his open mouth and in his eyes, feeding and searching with a lisping, slippery tongue and sliding through the torn, white vest. Where his hair used to be, green, slimy seaweed waves about, and his chest moves, rising and falling, in and out…
I stare into my plate at the indefinable morsels and narrow my eyes to slits. Don’t start crying now, go on eating, if I don’t do any chewing, and swallow very quickly, then I won’t taste a thing.
‘It’ll take two weeks to turn into a skeleton, we’ll keep on looking and see how it happens.
Back to school again: Walt will be there, he’s waiting, of course he’s there, he waves and smiles without a care in the world. Nothing wrong!
The afternoon heat scalds my throat and eyes making me feel sick. I must go to bed; my blood is beating in my throat and I can’t move. But I have to get to school, to the village, where he will be sitting relaxed and patient in the car, where he will lift me up, touch me, fondle me. we thank you. v = victory… I have to get there. Come along now, you lot, don’t dawdle, keep walking, honestly, that gull hasn’t changed yet, we can look at it tomorrow. Keep walking, or I might miss my lost soldier…
The village is empty and hot, the road stretching lazily
between small gardens with shrubs in bud and young plants flowering profusely. A goat bleats like a plaintive child and a cat crosses the road slowly, sits down and licks its fur, one paw extended high in the air.
The church, the crossroads. But there is no car outside the school.
‘We thank Thee, Lord, for granting us good health this day in one another’s company. Forgive us our sins, of which we have a multitude, and help us to confess our misdeeds.’ The master walks to the door and holds it open for us.
And suddenly I am sure they must know all about it at home, that they are angry with me and that my last foothold is about to splinter under me.
‘Go away, get out of here, we detest you, you and your townish ways.’ They have always known about it and have simply been biding their time. Now they will pack my suitcase and put me down by the dyke. And they are right, I am disgusting, I am a sinner, I am sure to go to Hell. I shall be punished, tormented…
As I sit by the window and look at the birds still flying about in the cool, noiseless evening air, Mem brings me a mug of milk. She pats my cheek and says, ‘Don’t fret, my boy, everything will turn out just fine. You’ll be getting a letter from them any day now, I think the post in Amsterdam is working again.’
I wake up because my body is shivering, my limbs shaking uncontrollably. I press myself flat into the mattress and clench my teeth. Beside me Meint is sleeping the calm, docile sleep of the young. I stare into the dark, but it stays black and void, his face, his voice, his smell, not reaching me, no matter how desperately I seek them.
Next morning I fold my shirt carefully with the breast pocket turned inside and quickly store it away in my suitcase. I do not so much as glance at the small photograph.