The low, white, quite small country house, from the look of it dating from the beginning of the last century, lay at the end of a lawn and radiated restrained distinction. At the same time it also looked like the center of a working farm. Next to it there were stalls, a haystack, sheds for agricultural machinery. It was called Klein Rechteren. The drive was flanked by large erratic stones and was strewn with gravel, which crunched feudally beneath his tires and forced even the Volkswagen to the slow sedateness of a Bentley. Because his intuition told him that he couldn't park his car right outside the door, he parked it opposite. When he got out, he saw a peacock sitting on the eaves.
The door was opened by a boy of about twenty with Down's syndrome. He looked up at Max with bewildered beady eyes.
"Mommy!" he shouted at once in a hoarse voice, without taking his eyes off Max.
A slender lady of about sixty appeared in the hallway. Max introduced himself and then also shook the warm, broad, motionless hand of her son, who turned out to be called Rutger. In the conservatory at the back of the house, where the doors to the terrace and the vegetable garden stood open, he was given a cup of China tea.
"I'm expecting my husband any moment. How is our Jan getting on? We haven't seen him for quite a while. He occasionally stays here when he has to come to Dwingeloo."
She was talking about the director. Although the director had of course explained exactly Max's own circumstances to them, she did not allude to them. That might have been discretion, but also something else; he felt a little uncomfortable with the cool politeness of her conversation, and he had the impression that this was the intention. Should he come to live here, he must be quite clear from the outset that this was no charter for familiarity.
Next to her stood a round table with framed family photos on it; also a photo of a white horse. Max looked at Rutger now and again with fascination. He sat in a wicker chair, the back of which spread to enormous dimensions like a throne, fiddling about, with his tongue hanging out. To his left a ball of violet wool lay on the ground; by means of a reel, with three small nails in it, he was weaving a woollen thread into a rope, which must by now be hundreds of feet long and lay in a colorful heap at his feet.
"Make very big curtain," he said when his eyes met Max's.
Max nodded at him in encouragement and looked at his mother.
"He's been working on it for about ten years, that very big curtain. I cut a bit off now and then, otherwise eventually we won't be able to get into the house anymore."
"And he doesn't notice?"
"Not if he doesn't see me doing it."
"Perhaps," said Max, "he has no sense of the length of that thread because he has no sense of time."
The baroness looked at him with an expressionless face. "Maybe."
Max had the feeling that he had gone too far: whoever talks about time is also talking about death.
A tractor approached down the path at the end of the vegetable garden, driven by a heavy figure in workman's clothes; only his sand-colored hat, the brim of which was turned up on one side and down on the other, indicated that this was not a simple farmer. He came into the conservatory in green boots and introduced himself with a hard, callused hand, without coming in. There was something severe, but not unfriendly, about his face; he sported a cultured, small white mustache.
"You're just in time, I've already had ten phone calls. Shall we get right off?"
For the second time Max realized that relationships must be clear, even though he had been recommended by a friend. As he went through the vegetable garden to the road next to his landlord-to-be, he became extraordinarily curious about what awaited him. Without entirely admitting it to himself, he hoped for an idyllic coach house among the trees, with a lawn in front; but to be on the safe side he prepared himself for a melancholy turf cutter's cottage on a canal, waiting motionless for drowning toddlers. It was clear that this would not happen when Gevers said that they could go on foot, because it was close by. Max told him about the Ambonese he had seen crawling through the woods.
"Those are those stupid Moluccans from Schattenberg," said the baron, "a few miles farther on. They're preparing for the liberation of their island on the other side of the world."
The Schattenberg estate: that was the present-day name of Westerbork camp.
"I really thought I was dreaming," said Max.
The baron nodded. "The world is made of dreams. Fortunately, there are only a few left and they'll be gone soon too, thanks to the observatory."
They met two girls on horseback, who called out, "Hello, Mr. Gevers!" cheerfully — and a few hundred yards farther on, where the road curved slightly, there was a turn-off toward a large wrought-iron gate, fixed to two carved, hard-stone plinths surmounted by shield-bearing lions. A bridge over a narrow canal led to a long drive flanked by a double row of trees; at the end of it there was a second bridge, across a moat, to the forecourt of a castle.
"Groot Rechteren," said Gevers with a motion of his hand, and pushed open the creaking gate.
A castle! As they walked over the loose planks of the bridge toward the drive, Gevers told him that he had been born here, like his father and grandfather before him, but it was all getting too expensive, staff particularly, and it was no longer heatable without going bankrupt. They had moved to Klein Rechteren. The castle had been temporarily divided up into flats, which were occupied by fairly respectable people — except for one, where there was a Communist, but that was now vacant.
Looking at the large, broad castle that he was approaching step by step, Max was speechless. At the sides and in the back it was surrounded by huge trees; it made an impression of neglect and it was not particularly beautiful — obviously it had been repeatedly converted and expanded over the course of the centuries — but it was unmistakably a castle: a building that was as different from a house as an eagle from a chicken. The facade, probably dating only from the nineteenth century, was flat and symmetrical; at the level of the attic, in the straight pointed gable above the entrance, was a clock without hands. On the ground floor there was a series of arch-shaped cellar windows; a double staircase led to the terrace with the main floor, flanked by high windows divided into small panes; the upper story ended on the right in a large balcony. Beneath it stood a container on the forecourt, into which someone was throwing planks and all kinds of rubbish. The back turned out to be older; the pointed roof of a square tower could be seen crowned by a weather cock. Could it be true that he was going to live in this fairytale place? Perhaps there by that balcony? What had he done to deserve it?
The castle was the center of a small hamlet. On the left there were newly planted saplings, which turned into coniferous woods, but on the right there were a number of small houses, a coach house, converted stables, and barns.
On the lawn in front of what had probably been the porter's lodge, a man with a scythe was cutting the grass around a colossal erratic stone, and looked up and said, "Hello, Baron," — which elicited a benevolent "Hello, Piet." Half visible between the buildings and hedges was an orangery, where there was also someone moving; under the trees a billy goat was trying to reach farther than the length of the rope around its neck would allow.