Eddy was back on the couch, curled up on a cushion.
"Move up, please," de Gier said. "I want to read for a while."
The rat squirmed around.
"If I read aloud, will you stop rattling?"
Eddy, soothed by de Gier's voice, became quiet. De Gier read in Frisian, guessing at the meaning of the foreign words, which resembled English here and there, but the verbs were conjugated according to German grammar. The story he had selected was called "Optimal Functioning."
"He weighs heavily on my stomach," de Gier read. He closed the book. Eddy was asleep. De Gier slid his finger under the rat's tail, flicking it up. "Did you follow the general trend of the tale?"
Eddy rearranged his tail.
"She has just eaten her husband," de Gier said. "This author who calls herself Martha when she writes." Because Eddy wouldn't wake up, de Gier addressed the plants as he watered them, being careful not to slosh the water. While he poured and talked, he read Mrs. Oppenhuyzen's instructions. "Ten cc, primula, twelve cc, fuchsia." He poured from a measured watering can.
"The Frisian character," de Gier said. "Consciously pure, so the impurities are repressed. In order to function optimally, Martha has to eat her husband. A literary joke? Not at all. A revelation, rather. This is serious stuff, true art, well written. The author is telling me, the intelligent reader, that here in Friesland, where true goodness reigns, evil is active under pressure. So how is it released?"
De Gier returned the sleeping Eddy to the terrarium upstairs.
He went back to the couch and immersed his mind further in the Frisian female aspect. Woman eats her man. De Gier penetrated into the next short story, where Martha beats her man to death. In the next tale she drowns him in a bath of black paint that, once he's quite dead, takes on a brilliant green color.
The book dropped away. De Gier dropped away with it. He changed into a spider. So did Martha, but she was three times his size. She rang a bell at him while she ate him slowly. He woke up with a shriek and was no longer being eaten, but the ringing persisted. De Gier rolled off the couch and reached for the telephone.
"Hello?"
"We dropped down a dike," Grrjpstra said. "Save us, Sergeant."
"Where are you?"
"Between the towns of Tzum," Grgpstra said, "and Tzummarum. In a village, but it's closed. In a phone booth without a phone book. Do something, Sergeant."
"You'll be all right," de Gier said, "but do tell me how you got there."
\\\\\ 8 /////
Do you two really have to content yourselves with this little rustbucket?" the commissaris had asked, while bouncing about in his seat. "I'm against total equality, but maybe some distances between ranks are a tittle stretched. Now look at me, with my super Citroen. Can't you two wangle a new car out of die administration? If you'd only try, you'd have a brand-new vehicle within a month. 1*11 countersign the application with pleasure. It'll make me feel less guilty."
"Yes sir," Grijpstra said. "I'll take up your request with de Gier. I myself don't care much one way or another, but you know how willful the sergeant can be. Old love. De Gier can be persistent." The Volkswagen jangled into a long street lined with factories, and wheezed past a railway station. "Didn't you say we would have to find a circular road?" Grypstra asked. "Yesterday I kept finding it, but now I seem to be missing it altogether."
"Some sort of dike?" the commissaris asked. "Built around the city? All roads leading out of town are supposed to connect to this circular road. That's what the local officers were saying. If we kept following the Ringway, we would see the headquarters of the Municipal Police, the State Police, and the Fire Brigade, three sizable six-story cubes. Very clever, all services within each other's reach."
"The signs are pointing to Germany now," Grijpstra said. "Pity I can't use our radio. It's still on the Amsterdam channel. Wouldn't work here anyway, the provinces have changed to more modern equipment."
"Keep driving," the commissaris said. "There'll be other signs that should guide us back to Leeuwarden."
The signs kept pointing east. Grijpstra made the Volkswagen cross the center division. "That's illegal, sir," the adjutant said. "I hope we were seen so that they can switch on their sirens and chase us and then we can listen to what they have to say and ask for directions when they're out of breath."
"Quite," the commissaris said.
"Now we're headed for Amsterdam," Grijpstra said, pointing at a sign. "That's much better. We're going south. In Germany we would be lost."
"Keep following these rural lanes," the commissaris said. "They may twist and turn a bit, but they should take us back to Leeuwarden."
Together they enjoyed the changing vistas of meadows lined by woods.
"Dingjum?" Grijpstra asked, half an hour later. "I've been here before. This is where Mem Scherjoen lives, and over there's the State Police station where Lieutenant Sudema is the chief."
"Why don't you stop?" the commissaris asked. "It's time for coffee. The lieutenant can give us directions on how to get back to Leeuwarden."
The lieutenant had gone home, but the corporal who had replaced him poured coffee. "Are you in charge of this murder case, sir?"
"I am.
"Maybe," the corporal said, "you should take a few minutes to visit the lieutenant. I'm sure he would like to keep informed of your progress. He lives close by. Your adjutant knows where."
"Nice walk," Grypstra said.
The commissaris phoned his wife.
"Where are you?" she asked. "I was expecting you. Couldn't you let me know you were planning to work late? You shouldn't be working, your leg is in bad shape. I could run you a hot bath."
"I do love you," the commissaris said, "and I would like to get back to you, but you've no idea how vast this country is. We keep driving forever. I wish you were here, you have a feeling for shortcuts."
"And a feeling for you."
"Yes," the commissaris said. "And don't worry, dear."
"Don't overstrain yourself."
"Grypstra is taking care of me," the commissaris said. "De Gier is around too. As he isn't Frisian, he won't be of much use to us here; he can't identify with the locals. Grypstra and I fit within the mental climate. You know I was bora here, in Joure. I thought I had forgotten, but my origins have bubbled up again. We always forget how important first impressions are. They shape our characters, inspire us all our lives."
"Dear Jan," his wife said. "Do what you have to do and then come back quickly."
A little later, strolling between majestic beeches towering above fields of corn where songbirds chanted divine compositions, the commissaris and Grijpstra discussed their shared roots. A most beneficial beginning, they agreed, that had influenced both their lives. Corruption that occurs later can do little to spoil a truly blissful start. While Grijpstra searched for proper expressions that would illustrate his happy feelings, the commissaris talked about rural peace, forgotten by city slickers, so that they become irritated by their own and each other's spiritual filth, but here-his arm followed a leaping jackrabbit between neat rows of cabbage and waved at a low little cloud, glowing in late light-"here in the natural harmony of untrammeled nature…"
"Evil will have a hard time here," Grijpstra said.
"Exactly, Adjutant. No wonder a spoiled soul like Scherjoen had to commit his misdeeds on the low side of the dike, and that he had to come to a horrible end in our parts, where the blessings of his homeland could no longer defend his miserable existence."
The commissaris shook his head, to rid himself of Amsterdam associations. "Ach, how hearlik is here ut libben."
"You're speaking Frisian, sir?"