‘Right, all set.’
The stripes of sunlight narrowed as the blinds were lowered again. Mr Snellaert pressed a button. The projector threw a beam of light on to the blackboard, over which he had draped a sheet kept in place by three board wipers along the top.
‘Now for the show,’ said the master, rubbing his hands.
First I saw the stream in black and white, winding among back gardens, some with hedges that were no longer there, and I saw a cow charging across a field to the water’s edge, where she dropped to her knees in the grass with a curiously determined air. Abruptly, the screen went dark.
‘It still needs a title,’ said Mr Snellaert. ‘Something like “Wartime Memories”, perhaps.’
The screen lit up again and a troupe of boys wearing gumboots stood in the water by the railway embankment, near where the stream discharged from a brick-lined tunnel. They waved. Laughed. The camera zoomed in. Faces were pulled in close-up, and among the jostle of heads and caps I could make out the long handle of a rake or hoe.
‘They had a whale of a time,’ said the master. ‘And so did I, to be honest. I had them find out the names of the German soldiers. They’d gone into hiding when the war ended. The Canadians found all four of them. Hadn’t eaten for days. Thin as rakes. Some Master Race! They scratched their names in the cement with their penknives — you can still see them, probably. But nowadays, what with my rheumatism…’ he patted his hip, ‘things aren’t as easy as they used to be.’
The antics on screen continued, with much waving of arms and splashing in the stream amid bare knees and rubber boots. There was something unreal about the scene, compounded by the whirr of the projector and intermittent clicks of the reel.
Around someone’s shins there appeared, as if by magic, an everted cuff of lacy foam and flying droplets, whereupon the legs shot up from the bed of the stream in a wide arc over the bulrushes and irises until their owner landed on his two feet on the bank.
Mr Snellaert scratched his scalp. He was about to speak when the picture changed.
I saw a pair of muddy hands displaying a couple of dented, rusty shells with trails of duckweed.
‘Yes, that’s right, we found them in the stream. One of the lads had a rake with him. I had them cleaned. They’re over there, on the bookshelf.’
Meanwhile the camera zoomed out, somewhat jerkily. The hands grew wrists, forearms, and then suddenly a chin appeared, and a mouth with a crooked smile I thought looked familiar.
‘Now who could that be?’ said the master in mock surprise.
It was Uncle Werner. His blond hair stuck out on all sides, just like in the old photos. I recognised his speckled pullover and the collar of his checked shirt. He puffed up his cheeks and rolled his eyes in a squint.
‘Always up to mischief,’ Mr Snellaert grinned. ‘I even locked him in the coal cellar once because he wouldn’t stop acting the clown, and things got out of hand.’
I was only half listening. The film was very strange. The figures suddenly moved close together, as if someone had ordered them to stand in a row. Equally suddenly the group of five or six youths switched from peering into the lens to lurching backwards and flapping their arms.
‘Drat,’ said the master. ‘Must’ve rewound it back to front. I thought it looked a bit odd …’
One by one they leaned forward. As though taking their leave from an oriental emperor on whom no back was permitted to be turned, they retreated through the water to the brick mouth of the tunnel. I saw the handle of the rake sink between their heads and blend into the alder coppice.
‘Oh bother,’ grumbled Mr Snellaert. He made to switch off the projector. ‘Silly me.’
‘Wait!’ I cried.
In the middle of the stream stood my father. Legs wide, hands on hips, water up to his ankles, eyes screwed up against the sun. He brought his hand to his ear, seemingly to hear what the master was saying, then I saw him nod. He bent over and with his hands on his thighs began to move backwards to the dark hole in the railway embankment. He waved again, then crouched, looked around him for the last time, as if he would never see the world again, and was engulfed in darkness.
The image juddered, the film flapped loose from the reel.
‘He was the first to come out at the other end,’ the master said. ‘I remember it well. Never let a chance go by to crawl over or under things …’
The master switched off the projector.
‘Died far too young, did your pa,’ he said.
He walked to the window and pulled up the blinds.
‘You make sure you live longer than him.’
I took the book home. Mysteries of Civilisation. ‘Ziggurat’ was the most exciting word in it.
The car arrived at about half-past ten the next morning. They really couldn’t stay, they said, too busy. My mother’s brother wore his sunglasses and slouched against the car, smoking a cigarette while she went inside to take charge of my suitcase. She said it was very kind but they had stopped on the way for a quick bite on the dike at Blankenberge.
I merely shook hands with Uncle and Aunt — much too formally, I thought.
‘See you in a couple of weeks, then,’ said Aunt.
They didn’t come to the door to wave goodbye, and I didn’t look back as we circled the churchyard before turning into the high street and then taking the motorway.
NOW, WHENEVER I THINK BACK TO THOSE EARLY DAYS IN my first nest, and to the years that followed, during which, until the age of sixteen or so, I spent at least two weekends a month there, I see myself walking alone along the fields, and nearly always it is summer. Encapsulating all my memories like a glass dome is the languid stillness of a day in July. A July of parched mud in the verge, a cat streaking out from under the hedge, and high in the azure sky a sports plane chugging faintly over a world devoid of human life.
The road is deserted. In the upstairs windows above the shop, the net curtains sway gently in the draught. The screen door clicks open and shut, the table is laid, the kettle is still warm on the hob, and up in the gutter pigeons dance the fandango.
My existence there is limited to seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling. When I look in the mirror I can see through myself. Maybe I’m in heaven.
A few days before Uncle Werner died I helped carry him from his sickbed by the window to the table. While Aunt was in the kitchen heating the milk I cut his slice of bread into strips, watched him eat them with tremulous movements and heard him take greedy gulps from the large bowl he held to his mouth with fingers like desiccated wings.
He had turned into an overgrown, hoar-frosted child howling in the night because of his dreams, from which he woke in terror. Using my handkerchief for want of a napkin, I wiped the cream off his upper lip while our eyes met. I saw death in his bewildered gaze, which was something I had only read about in books and which seemed rather far-fetched and sentimental at the time, but I saw it in the whites of his eyes and in his dilated pupils gorging themselves on the living world for as long as they were able.
He only spoke once. ‘Joris,’ he said. I had a feeling it was more an unconscious reflex at the sight of my face than true recognition, but I responded with ‘Pa’, anyway.
Aunt sat at a corner of the table and watched, seeking to glean some slight comfort from every sip of milk he took, every morsel of bread, although she knew it was hopeless.
Each time I visited she put her hands on my shoulders and said: ‘Still growing, I do believe’, whereas it was she who was shrinking in my arms.
I cannot think back to the pair of them without being reminded of my school compositions. Not because of their headings, but because of the illusion that every utterance from those days could still safely be erased. I see myself happily brushing the rubber crumbs off my page, unperturbed by the gouges left in the paper by my sharp pencil.