NL
ENGJan Schouten says:
THE GAZELLE’S SWAN SONG
1 December 2010, 15:20
This neighbourhood is just where I belong. I’ve stood here for so many years. In full view of the world. Ever seen me − me, his Gazelle?
It’s September. He lives on the top floor, my lonely hero.
For months, his windows have been open. The curtains flap at all hours. Sagging fabrics. Flag signals. How could I decipher them? Have you seen him, these last few weeks?
‘He did it himself,’ I hear someone say. ‘There was a rope. He was hanging there for three weeks. Or longer. Or not so long.’
And as for me, once his gleaming steed, what am I good for now? Twelve kilos of old iron, offered free on e-Bay. Worn out, I am, decrepit as that puny body that propelled me slower each day, a rusty heap of metal. And my torn saddle, who would abide it now? Sprint off by myself then? Round the block one more time? No chance! I’m locked, he’s got the key, my hero who won’t be coming down again.
A man comes and takes photos of me. A neighbour lady looks over his shoulder, seems a nice woman, would have been just right for him.
‘It’s a great pity,’ she says, ‘we had to cancel our street party.’
Ah yes, the annual street party. Finally making time for each other, a bit like Christmas. Not my sort of thing of course, who would say otherwise? But that warmth! How I would have loved it, if someone had grabbed me by the handlebars and dragged me there.
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Gazelle is a famous Dutch bicycle brand.
DRAGONFLIES DON’T STING, THEY SAY.
8 February 2011, 10:41
Look! Staff nurse Hessing has left my window open!
It was bound to happen. He’s not been himself recently.
But what a golden opportunity, can’t let it go!
Look at my dragonfly, her silver wings, they’re trembling
with excitement. They’ll carry me upstairs later, just as
Papa promised me. ‘You’re my sweet girl,’ he’d said,
‘Here’s a brooch, specially for you, when you’re feeling a
bit down.’ ‘And,’ Papa whispered in my ear,‘ listen,
sweetie, don’t cry, listen to Papa!’
When you’re feeling a bit down, spread your wings. Soar like a dragonfly, Francisca, higher and higher: like the lightest feather, like the whitest cloud. And think of me. Everything will be fine.’
From the seventh floor, Francisca came down. It was Hessing who found her, stretched out in the flower bed.
Her head was at a funny angle. But the smile on her lips! And what about the brooch in her hand? A dragonfly, sparkling in the morning sunshine!
It reminded Hessing of his own daughter. She was not doing
so well, she was feeling a bit down recently.
He put the brooch in his pocket, the patient didn’t need it
any more. Perhaps the beautiful dragonfly would cheer his
daughter up, since she was feeling a bit down.
Photography: www.sparkleshop.nl
FOREVER, DARLING
19 December 2011, 15:00
Thomas used to be a basketball player. A pro. A real star. It was a good thing he sometimes mentioned it himself, said the girls at the office, or no one would have suspected it. That bookkeeper with his growing beer belly, there was not much to recall a vigorous athlete.
‘You don’t believe it? Just look! ’urged the truly unattractive single. And he would point at the yellowing sports photos pinned to his notice board.
‘Just look at that: what a dunk! You know, when . . . I could really fly, it was the deciding point in the playoffs. When . . . remember? . . against whatchemecallit.’
No one was the slightest bit interested.
That included the woman who was anticipating in growing anxiety the moment at which her biological clock would sound its fatal last stroke and plucked Thomas from a line of seasoned Dating Direct regulars, just in time.
‘My name’s Gertrude, ’said the woman on their first date, ‘but you can call me Truus.’
He liked her. Call-me-Truus ran a chiropody practice. Perfect, decided Thomas. It suited his business background.
‘Truus, ’he had whispered to her when the umpteenth silence in their conversation had started to hurt him, ’Truus, I’m a war child.’
Thomas had picked this sentence up in Readers Digest. ‘I need warmth, ’he said,
‘I miss it.’
‘That’s not my thing’, said Truus, ‘I’m from the Cold War.’
They both thought that was a funny way of breaking the ice.
On their third evening together, Truus gave him a small ebony elephant. It hung from a small gold-plated chain and she hung it around his neck.
‘Here, I picked it out specially, it suits you. Whenever I see it I can always think of what you’re really like: a sweet little elephant.’
Me, 7 feet tall and 22 stone, a sweet little elephant? The words grated on him and felt alien. He had to swallow. But he soon recovered his composure: after all, what do words matter? Truus had taken the trouble to go into town and she had chosen the little gift especially for him, she had said so, hadn’t she?
How was Thomas to know that this person who would shortly be the woman in his life had fished the little elephant out of her jewellery box, a black lacquered little chest that was filled to the brim with sparkling professions of love from the married man to whom she had devoted 13 years of her life and who had dumped her so outrageously?
So he said ‘Right, right. Nice, really nice, ’And he said, ‘we must always be honest to each other, that’s important.’
‘You’d better be!’ said Truus, and as if alarmed by his bewildered face, she added hastily: ‘I’m sure. I love you. I’m going to stay with you . . . for ever.’
That confession gave Thomas a warm feeling.
But why didn’t he ask the obvious questions, like ‘What are you looking for? ’or ‘What do you want from me?’
Didn’t they occur to him? Or could they not escape from the bastion of his yellow teeth, because the ears that would have to receive these questions had moved immediately after her protestation of love in the direction of his crotch?
Shortly after the birth of her child, Truus started to castrate her husband. She didn’t use a knife. But there are other instruments. This is how the emasculation process began.
One day, Thomas had wanted to surprise his wife with some scent. At Aalders, the perfumery, he had them spray four different ones on his wrist. They all smelled nice. Which one should he choose? He came home empty-handed.
At the dinner table, his knife poised to tackle his schnitzel, Truus grabbed his arm.
‘What’s that smell, Thomas? Where have you been?’
‘At Aalders, ’he said, ‘I wanted to surprise you, but I didn’t know what to choose.’
Truus’s reaction was not what he had unexpected.
‘Be honest with me, you lousy good-for-nothing, ’she said, ‘who is it?’
Thomas couldn’t answer this –there was no one else – but he could and did tell her at length how he had come by the scents, and what he had intended to do with them, in more and more detail, as her questions became more and more probing. It didn’t help. Honesty is the greatest danger in marriage, he concluded. It drives a suspicious wife completely mad.
That was the first of many nights that Thomas found himself sleeping in the spare bedroom.
His colleagues were perplexed. Where was the man who had bloomed so hopefully in the first few months of his marriage?
And Truus?
Truus wondered to herself: what do I need him for, now that I can no longer trust him? After all, he had already performed his duty. Should she get rid of him, perhaps? Hmm, but then would she have to live on the meagre income from her chiropody practice?
Money and laziness in action, the twin saviours of a marriage that would last an eternity and would not even crack when Thomas said, one evening, that he had some news.
‘I’m being sent to Bangkok for a week, ’he said, ‘to check the accounts at our branch there.’
This was the first time he had ever been singled out for this task, and there was pride in his voice.
‘Thailand, ’said Truus, ‘So you’re off to Thailand. Don’t worry about it, no problem at all, I’ll take care of everything here.’
Thomas’s large pale eyes looked down at her mouth, and effortlessly identified the sarcastic twist of her lips. He tried to understand, and he actually succeeded, but he didn’t go into the matter any further. The only way he could make her happy was by making dinner, a task that had fallen to him since the day that Truus had quite suddenly and assertively stopped cooking, and had made it clear to him, when he inquired hungrily into the matter of dinner, that the combination of chiropody and family had grown too much for her. Couldn’t he appreciate that?! Yes, it was quite clear to him.
In the aeroplane, Thomas found himself a seat near the emergency exit. There were times during the flight at which Thomas felt a strong urge to pull the red handle and step outside. That was because of the man next to him, who not only found it necessary to keep ordering things in a loud voice that made it impossible to sleep, but had even – when he had almost dropped off – bloody well knocked against him.
‘Come on, ’said the man, ‘let’s have a drink.’
‘Thank you, ’said Thomas, ‘I’ll pass.’
He was not such a bad fellow, and went ahead and asked the inevitable question.
‘I escaped, ’said the man, ‘Are you married?’
‘Yes, ’said Thomas.
‘I wish you lots of courage! ’said the man. He downed his glass. Sighed deeply. ‘I escaped. I’m the happiest man in the world.’
They exchanged business cards and told each other their first names.
Thomas gave it another go: ‘Escaped? Escaped from what?’
‘From self-fulfilling suspicion, ’said the man whose name was Willem.
Thomas must have stared with an expression of disbelief that Willem took as encouragement, must have done, since he launched into anecdotal mode without noticing Thomas’s hand reaching for the in-flight magazines.
‘There’s always a first time, ’said Willem. ‘With me, it started with a promotion. The meetings lasted longer. I was late for dinner. ‘Where have you been?’ At a reception, a female colleague introduces herself. ‘Who’s that, what’s going on between you?’ After a party I come home a bit tipsy. ‘Was she there too?’ Her friends report back that they’ve seen me having lunch with a client who is known for shacking up with everyone. ‘You’ve got someone else,’ she says. After that, endless nagging bullshit. And the doghouse, of course. No shagging.
For the first ten years I never touched another woman. One day I got really fed up with her bullying. So I fucked my secretary. My wife found out. D’ye know what the first thing was that she said?’
‘No,’ said Thomas, ‘How the hell should I know?’
The man laughed, but he didn’t sound too cheerful.
‘See, I always knew I was right. ‘That was the first thing she said. ‘I’ve always known. ‘For years, she said.’
The man sighed. He offered Thomas a mini-bottle.
‘No,’ said Thomas, ‘rather not.’
‘Fine, fine, ’said the man, ‘By the look of you, you have no idea what I’m talking about. Everything’s all hunky-dory with you, and I force you to listen to all my drivel. Sorry, that’s no fun. But I tell you honestly, I escaped. I’m over sixty, and now I’m married to a Thai girl of twenty-four. I didn’t care about her all that much in the beginning. But now I’d never want to be without her. Wouldn’t miss her for the world.’
‘What’s her name?’
Willem declined to answer this surprising question. Instead, he talked at length about the qualities of his young wife, which were so wonderfully different from those of his first wife.
Although the man fell silent after that, Thomas was unable to sleep. He stayed wide awake for the whole flight.
Thomas has returned from his business trip. Truus sits facing him. She has just asked him, ‘How was it? ’His thumping heart says what he wants most is to tell her everything honestly, but should he name the girl? Explain how her hands feel, and how her body, with its casual caresses, strokes him as she splashes his big body in the hot shower, and should he not leave out anything, and say how he lets her do as she pleases, without shame? And speak of the bliss that makes him dizzy and to which he abandons himself, with his eyes shut?
‘One evening I drove to an elephant farm after work, ’he said, ‘I watched them washing the elephants. A beautiful sight, Truus. I went back as often as I could.’
Truus stares at him like a horseman who has just been kicked by his favourite horse. Then she starts to laugh, much more loudly than Thomas can remember her ever laughing before.
‘Elephants being washed, ’she cries, ‘What a scream! You must be mad. Didn’t it ever get boring?’
‘Not once, ’says Thomas. He is relieved that he can finally be honest.
‘Not for a second! I didn’t miss a day.’
WOUNDS
We called him the creep. It was my turn to drive, and after I’d dropped off the other two tennis mates, I was alone with him in the car. His name was Menno.
Menno was chomping away on a Mars bar. When he’d finished, he licked his fingers. Then he chucked the wrapper on the floor.
So, the creep. A substitute player.
Our fourth player, who’d had to drop out for six weeks, had given us a potted description of him: ‘The guy’s called Menno. Made lots of money in property around Amsterdam and The Hague. Lost it all again in the crisis. Recently come back down to earth, living the simple polder life. Alone. Wife’s up and left him of course.’
‘He can hit a fair ball, ’he had added.
‘Sounds all right’, we thought, ‘Send him over, then!’, but it only took one match for Menno to earn his nickname.
You have to understand a bit about tennis to know how a creep behaves. To start with, Menno acted as if he was playing singles. That was just about forgivable. Less so was his smug smirk if you pointed it out to him. His line calls were also obnoxious, since they were always to his advantage. Funny character, who couldn’t bear ever to lose again. And then there was that triumphant yell if he got to smash a ball at the net! It wouldn’t occur to him to thank his team-mate, who’d set it up for him. He was a reasonable player, and when we praised him – we still troubled to do so in those early days − Menno would just shrug his shoulders. So it was soon clear what he thought of our level.
A facsimile of a man, a clipped crow. Uncharming to the bone. A phoney. I don’t remember ever taking a stronger dislike to anyone than I did to Menno, and if you ask me for more examples, I’ll still be here next week. But there’s something else I want to say.
To get from Almkerk, where we play tennis, to his house, I turn off at the windmill towards Zuilinchem, the village where Menno recently moved into the made-over shed that overlooks the mansion he was once born in, and which is now home to the family of a fellow property developer who had more luck.
The road leads over a high dike. Behemoth trucks hurtle towards me. The road is narrow. Good thing the creep keeps his trap shut. Hasn’t said a word since we walked off the court. Suits me fine. I focus on the traffic and am making quite a good job of forgetting him.
Suddenly – in a turn in the road – he comes back to life.
‘Hey, ’he says, ‘That bit of water there!’
He points to a small pond at the bottom of the dike.
‘Would you stop here for a minute?’
During our doubles matches and afterwards, when we’re drinking our beer, Menno talks like a supercilious lord of the manor. But now his question comes out softly, almost bashful. I park the car.
He leans forwards. He sighs,
‘There, ’he says, ‘under the willow trees. That’s where my father always used to fish.’
He wipes the condensation off the windscreen.
‘It was his favourite place,’ he says.
I can smell his sweat right through his deodorant.
‘Christ, ’he says, ‘I can just see him sitting there. I would cycle along this dike on my way back from school. Every day. Fifteen, I was then. I see him. He sees me. He waves me over to come and join him.’
He slumps back into his car seat.
From under the sleeve with which he wipes his face I hear him whisper.
‘Didn’t do it, never did, ’he says.
I sit still, letting the silence grow. I see a boy of about fifteen with his satchel strapped to the back of his bike. He’s riding home, always crossing this dike. His father misses him, his father beckons to him, but he cycles on.
Suddenly I’m revisited by an old pain.
My head fills with images of my own father when he was still alive. He has waited up for me, as he did so often when I came home late from a party. Things are not going well between him and my mother. He’s alone, now too, sitting in the light of a single standard lamp, the rest of the room dark. He says: ‘Come and sit with me, old man, let’s have a good chat.’ Does he think I haven’t heard? My father repeats his invitation. Before he has time to pour me a drink I’m already tugging at the door-knob.
‘Let’s go, ’I hear Menno saying. The whites of his eyes look bloodshot. What’s he after? Comfort? Something to cheer him up, perhaps? Does he want to hear how I torment my own memory with that one question to which I fear the answer?
I bend over the steering wheel and start the engine.
Before he gets out, Menno points at the floor and says: ‘Your car needs a proper cleaning job.’
I let it go.