The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed. And all that he did or suffered took place in and by himself.
From nothing to nothing, round and round.
With unwavering hands Melanie Darma held the wires above her belly like a halo, bringing together the ends with a firm and deliberate motion, filled with the deepest elation that this particular journey was at an end.
A Goose for Christmas
Alexander McCall Smith
1
Old farmer Hondercooter had a place near a hill that everybody called Birds’ Hill. He had 250 acres, which was a reasonable size for a dairy farm in that part of the country. Sheep people had far more — thousands of acres, whole plains, it seemed, whole mountainsides, but dairy people had no need of such wide horizons. “I can walk across my land,” he sometimes said. “I know every inch of it. The good bits, the bad bits — I know the lot.”
As well as keeping cows, Hondercooter usually had at least six geese about the farmyard, a flock of laying hens, and a dog of indeterminate breed, Old Dog Tray. This dog was named after a dog in the German children’s book, Struwelpeter, in which the faithful dog Tray is tormented by a cruel boy. Eventually Tray turns on the boy and defends himself. Hondercooter had that book read to him when he was a child and found it frightening. But the name Tray struck him as being a good name for a dog, and so he chose it when the dog first came to him as a puppy.
“Old Tray is a good dog,” he said to visitors. “Looks after the place. Follows me round. Barks. Does everything you need a dog to do.”
2
Hondercooter was of Dutch extraction. His father had gone to New Zealand as a young man and taken up farming near the Abel Tasman in the South Island. In those days it was not a particularly fashionable part of the country. Later, it became popular with people of an alternative outlook — hippies, in particular, liked the atmosphere, and settled there to grow their own vegetables and run small pottery and batik workshops. The farmers were bemused by these people, but by and large got on well with them.
Hondercooter was a New Zealander through and through, although he was proud of his Dutch ancestry. “Dairy farming is what we do,” he said. “You can’t find a better dairy farmer than a Dutchman. It’s in the blood.”
He had never married. “Wives are expensive,” he joked. “Look at what it costs to keep a wife. Just look!”
The fact that he was unmarried meant that there were no obvious heirs. “He may have cousins somewhere,” people speculated. “You never know.”
3
Hondercooter’s nearest neighbour was a farmer called Ted Norris. Ted was a bit younger than Hondercooter, and, unlike him, was married. His wife was called Betty, and she had a substantial reputation as a cheese-maker. She had won prizes for her cheeses in Auckland and Wellington, and had even been chosen for a New Zealand Cheese exhibition in Melbourne. That trip to Australia was her first trip abroad. “It opened my eyes,” she said when she returned.
After that experience, Betty hankered for another foreign trip.
“Waste of money,” said Ted Norris. “Airports. Rush. All that stuff. Why don’t we drive down to Dunedin instead? Or Christchurch, maybe.”
Betty got her way, though, and a few years later they went on a trip to Rome and Paris. Rome was chosen because Ted was a devout Catholic. Paris was for Betty. She had never converted to Catholicism, although she was on good terms with the local priest, who regularly dropped in on the farm to play a game of chess with Ted.
Another regular social engagement for Ted and Betty was the visit of Hondercooter, who came for Sunday dinner once a month. After the meal the three of them would sit in the living room and drink a cup of coffee while Ted erected a screen to show his slides of the trip to Rome. Hondercooter knew these slides well, but did not mind looking at views of St Peter’s while Ted explained the finer points of its architecture. It reassured him to hear these facts — in a changing world, it was helped to be reminded that there were people who took the long view, who thought in terms of eternity.
4
Hondercooter reciprocated this hospitality, even though he was not much of a cook. Ted and Betty came for dinner every other month, and they then played canasta for the rest of the evening. Betty took the opportunity, too, to tidy up Hondercooter’s house a bit. This became something of a private joke with them, and Hondercooter would issue his invitation by saying that he would be pleased if Betty came round to tidy things up a bit. She could bring Ted, of course, and there would be a bite to eat afterwards. This never failed to amuse them.
5
Hondercooter was quite well-off. His father had done well for himself and had made good investments. By the time he died and they came to Hondercooter, they were worth a considerable sum. Hondercooter never touched them. They were looked after by a lawyer in Nelson, a cadaverous-looking man called Bollingworth, who sent a report every six months of the state of the investments. He usually used the same words to describe the portfolio of shares. “Very good, on the whole.”
Hondercooter also had one or two personal items of some value. One of these was a small painting in an ornate gilded frame. This had belonged to his maternal grandmother’s family, and had been brought out to New Zealand by Hondercooter’s father. It was typical of Dutch painting of the late sixteenth century, and depicted a group of peasants working on the harvest. In the background, the sails of a windmill could be made out, half hidden by a stand of trees.
This painting was by Pieter Brueghel, although the small gilt lozenge glued on to the bottom of the frame claimed the artist as Jan Brueghel the Younger. This attribution, which would have considerably reduced the painting’s value, was false.
“Nice painting, that,” commented Ted Norris. “By a Dutchman?”
“I think so,” said Hondercooter. “It was my grandmother’s. There are an awful lot of Dutch paintings, you know. Lots of old ones.”
Ted was more interested in the agricultural detail. “What are they harvesting?” he asked.
“Hard to tell,” said Hondercooter. “Probably wheat. You like that painting, Ted?”
“Yes,” said Ted Norris. “I saw a lot of paintings like that in Rome. Only they were bigger and they were by Italians. No, I like it a lot.”
“I’ll leave it to you in my will,” said Hondercooter.
Ted Norris thought he was joking, but Hondercooter assured him he was not.
“Well, that’s decent of you,” said Ted Norris.
6
Hondercooter was fattening one of the geese for Christmas. He had chosen the goose, which was the largest of the flock, and also the most bad tempered. He remembered something that he had learned about geese in school. The Romans kept geese as watchdogs, did they not? And hadn’t the geese hissed to alert the Romans that somebody was about to attack Rome? He would have to ask Ted Norris whether he knew that story; he had been to Rome, of course.
This bad-tempered goose seemed to sense that something was up. As Christmas approached, he became increasingly aggressive, going so far as to hiss at Hondercooter himself as he walked past him in the yard. Hondercooter even had to aim a kick at the goose on one occasion and almost tripped up as a result.