In a Dark Wood

by Marcel Moring

  An eddy of old acquaintances forms in the raging sea and he almost sinks beneath exclamations, good-natured insults and far too many free beers. And he drinks greedily, because it’s warm here. He listens to stories large and small. The singer, who has just made a new record. A photographer who has just signed a contract with a national newspaper and has now treated himself to a far too expensive darkroom. And the other photographer, whom he has known for half his life and who is one of his best friends and is standing here with a glass of mineral water in his hand because he has to photograph The Night and wants to keep the horizon straight. Beer, cigarettes, swearing. It’s almost like…life.

  Everything is there and there is nothing.

  As the beer and the smoke swirl in and around him and the voices tangle into a rope that wraps itself around him, tighter and tighter, until he is snugly locked away in the words and the smells and the taste of beer, while the evening is still young, while he is there and feels arms on his shoulders and hands shaking his hands, there are eyes: the eyes of his friends and acquaintances and the eyes of the few women who have come along with their boyfriends, the eyes of the people who know that tomorrow they will doubtless have a headache and remorse, God yes, remorse, but they’ll be over it in a day and get on with their life, that life of green apples from the greengrocer and ‘shall we have omelette today?’, the life of once-or twice-a-month sex with him on top, or if it’s going to be very exciting, a life that will one day bring children and a dog, or perhaps a cat, Virginia creeper over the shed roof and holidays in France, the life of ordinary people who share ordinary things with each other and know each other by their ordinary things. Ah, they read him, the intricate pieces he writes about the state of the world at this point in time or about an author who spent eight years working on something that is so deep and significant that no one understands it any more, apart from Marcus Kolpa. They do that and they say: We know him, that good old Marcus Kolpa, who felt a bit too good for us and moved away. A poof? No, no, quite the contrary, he fucked everything that wasn’t fixed down and lots that was, even middle-aged married women, the wives of master butchers and primary-school teachers. Marcus Kolpa, ah, if they’ve heard his supple tongue and felt his circumcised cock, what else could they want, eh? How many chances does a woman have in this godawful place for a man who got away? When will a woman in this time-forgotten vale of tears encounter a man who understands her so completely that he can fuck her without fucking her? Marcus Kolpa. Marcus how-far-have-you-got-in-the-encyclopaedia Kolpa. That’s what their eyes say and he knows they say it. Swathed in the words they come out with, the arms that rest on his shoulders, the bitter-sickly smell of the beer and the oppressive atmosphere of sociability, he remembers what lies, what lay, underneath all this. He cannot, to his own surprise and annoyance, forget how much all this…the people, their thoughts, what they said and what they did…how much he hated it all. It’s so goddamned cosy in The Grotto, so sociable and convivial and lets-not-mention-it-ever-again, that he barely feels the knife sticking into his back.

  But then, when he can no longer recognise the expressions and sees only stupid, empty eyes, when he no longer sees the faces as the familiar portraits from his youth, when his supposed mildness is no longer a match for his loathing, then he feels the hard tip, the steel blade.

  Oh yes, these were the people who actually asked, when he used a word of more than three syllables, how far he had got in the encyclopaedia. These were the people who didn’t see him as a Jew when it didn’t matter to them and did when it was useful, a poof because he was the only one who didn’t go around in the blues and rock uniform of jeans and denim jacket and cowboy boots, but in old-rose velvet bell-bottoms and a pistachio-coloured safari suit, and when he wore a white linen jacket they said: It’s hard to keep clean, isn’t it? And when they worked out that he wasn’t a poof, they said he’d fucked half the female population of the town, when in fact he was a tragic virgin, a tragic virgin in love. They had asked him to write their term papers for them and never thanked him, borrowed his money and never paid it back. They had hijacked his plans, stolen his ideas, and they had made their careers out of it. A horde of talentless, mistrustful, underhand villagers whose highest aim in life was to be as similar to each other as possible and have children who were as far as possible even more similar to one another. A grey mass that crowded round the Italian ice-cream shop and chose vanilla when they had five hundred different flavours to choose from.

  He feels the weight of their eyes resting on his shoulders. He must, in spite of everything, be there for them. Who will bear their suffering for them if he isn’t there? Their Jesus, that’s who he is. In the absence of a real Jesus, he’ll let himself be crucified for them. No doubt that he’ll go down that route, that he’ll let them, with their well-meaning expressions, drag him down the Arcade, feet along the grey paving stones, the green light from the algae-covered roof on his white face. He will allow himself to be chastised with whips and drink vinegar from the sponges passed to him by the grocer and the pram dealer. And he will smile gratefully at the soldiers from the town council and he will be what they ask him to be. He will be their Jew. He will ask them if he can be their Jew.

  Here he is, in the middle of their simple and insignificant lives, their good intentions that come out wrong and their boundless naivety, and he will say it:

  Let me be your Jew…

  High above the bar new beer arrives, through the atmosphere that is too thick with smoke and the smell of beer and steaming bodies, twilight and music, a Dutch hit is played from a few years ago, sung by a local group

  ‘When the grass is two arses high,

  Girls, you’d better take care…’

  over the heads of the people crowding round the pump the beer floats, and while that is happening the conga collapses on the steps, rolls slowly but inevitably backwards and turns into a ball of limbs reaching out for something to hold on to, someone tumbles backwards down the steps, crashes into the crowd at the bar and knocks two, three, four others over, the glass that floats above the bar on its way to Marcus, hangs in the void for a moment, faintly lit by a cobbler’s lamp and turned for a few seconds into a shining gold grail.

  Under normal circumstances it’s a guarantee of vicarious shame, this song: look at the products of our provinces, oh dear, oh dear…But now the whole café is heaving and there are whoops, fingers pinch buttocks, on the steps to the upstairs room a new polonaise begins.

  ‘Another beer for Marcus!’

  But he has already gone.

  A helmsman between Scylla and Charybdis as he staggers his way through the turmoil, through the isthmus of the tiny Mulderstraat, past the hotel, to the square in front of it, where the journey began. Around eight, the world wild and heaving. He is back where he was. As restless as a mangy dog rolling in the sand.

  He stands in the square in front of the hotel and his room beckons enticingly, the bed against the wall, the television on the little cupboard in the corner, the narrow space between the bed and the other wall, the fluorescent-white bathroom with the shower.

  Neon, party lights, floodlights, bellowing voices (Olé oléoléoléééé…) and scraps of music, the rutting roar of engines, girls shrieking, trays of beer sailing on five fingertips above the sea of heads, a woman’s mouth sucking hard on a man’s mouth, a man’s arm resting on a man’s shoulder, Enter the Dragon at the Apollo Cinema, Theooooo, we’re going to Lodz…

  And then, while he is weighing things up like a donkey between two piles of hay, there in the distance, with the gait of a giraffe stepping through the long grass of the savannah, dressed from top to toe in dull black leather, eyes like searchlights, a bush of hair like an orange halo and, thrilling under the supple leather of her jacket, the most impressive breasts north of the Equator, there goes Antonia d’Albero.

  Antonia.

  Antonia, her cleaving-all-waters bow, her tinkling laugh. She sank her teeth into life, as though life were a brown-grill
ed chicken leg, bursting with meat juice, ah, a bowl of hot juices, yes, as if life were worth living. The weight of those enormous breasts in his hands, her round buttocks in his pelvis, a buffer, yes, a cushion that caught and received him, warmly and completely and invitingly received him, the cries that escaped from the depths of her throat, the

  Ooooooohs

  aaaaaaahs

  do—it

  NOW!

  Now

  Now Now

  Now

  Now

  Now!

  and:

  ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

  He stands watching open-mouthed, between, over and past the heads of all the drunken farmers’ sons, their pale bodies in denim jackets, the weekend easy-riders, partygoers who don’t care about a thing…He stands and stares and feels, from his feet, a wave of, Jesus, warmth…no: excitement…no: ants creeping through his bloodstream…no: rut and heat and hormones and adrenalin and, God, yes, LIFE JUICES!, yes, life juices flowing through his legs, his crotch his belly his chest up through his throat the hollow of his jaws into his head.

  Antonia…

  Each step, each movement of her body, is an impulse to leap for the big explosion.

  He doesn’t even have time to shut his eyes.

  The surf closes over him, the recoil of a memory he thought he had forgotten, which sweeps his feet from under him and throws his headshoulderneckback forward

  Ti scopo finché piangi!

  Ti faccio il culo finché piangi!

  He turns in a whirl of panic and lust and runs inside, bumps into a clump of peasant rockers in denim jackets, is thrown out again, takes another run, aims for the door of the hotel, wide open, gaping like the mouth of…

  and feels a hand on his shoulder…

  ‘Marco…’

  A chill shudder runs down his spine, the cold sweat breaks out, his legs are weak, his hands trembling.

  ‘Antonia.’

  He has turned round and there she stands in front of him. Smiling. Happy! The evening light darkens behind her. Sodium lamps, orange flames.

  ‘Your hotel?’

  All he can do is nod silently.

  ‘Andiamo.’

  She hooks her left arm in his right arm and allows him to lead her into the hellish cauldron of the over-full hotel, where the clock says just eight o’clock, through the shaking, crashing mass of squinting randy eyes aimed at her bosom and following her swaying arse as they pass, up, up the stairs, down the corridor, into his room.

  He is helpless. He is hapless. He is hopeless.

  ‘Grab your things. We’re going.’

  His father’s face looms out of his sleepy fog: forehead level with his left cheek, chin above his right.

  Words like pebbles tumbling slowly through the darkness.

  ‘Get up, son.’

  He sits up in his bed, a ring of sheets and blankets around his waist.

  He swings his legs around and slips out of the bed. The floor is cold. He feels the chinks between the boards.

  His clothes are on his shoes. He hops as he puts them on, dancing on the chilly floor.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  There’s no answer, just a short movement.

  He does his shoelaces and tries not to look up.

  They walk through the dark room in silence. The blue moonlight falls through the high windows and the frames lie like elongated circles in the patches of light on the floor.

  When they’re halfway there, someone turns over in their sleep. His father freezes and waits until everything is completely still again. As they stand there Marcus hears the blood pounding in his ears.

  Outside dry leaves flutter past the walls. A few branches sweep through the circle of light above the door. His father stretches out his arm and pulls him to him. He looks right, left, and right again.

  ‘Come,’ he says.

  They walk to the iron gate, from shadow to shadow. His father puts his hand in his pocket and takes something out. He bends down to the lock. It isn’t long before there’s the sound of a faint click.

  It’s pitch-dark beneath the trees. The crowns reach so far and so low over the wall around the grounds that it’s as if they’re standing in a tunnel.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Home.’

  He reaches out his hand and lays it in his father’s.

  It’s a painful awakening for Marcus Kolpa. His mouth is so wide open that his jaws are cramped. He chews on nothing, licks his dry lips and tastes the metal taste of sleep at the wrong time of day.

  Bed. Bedroom.

  When the contours of his surroundings have assumed the form that he recognises as his hotel room he realises where he is, why he is here and, finally, who was here with him.

  Where is she?

  How long has he slept?

  Was she really here?

  It isn’t long before he’s inspected the bathroom and knows that she was here and she’s gone. The drops of water still running down the tiles, the lid of the toilet seat standing upright, the wet towel over the ring of the basin, the clues are clear.

  He goes and sits on the edge of his bed and thinks.

  Why has she gone? When? Where to? These are questions that he asks himself almost instinctively. Quite honestly, he isn’t really interested in the answers. More than anything he’s relieved that he’s alone, that no post-coital conversations are expected of him, that he’s free to go, alone and with the feelings of guilt and shame that are now starting to rise up in him.

  When he stands under the shower for the second time that evening, he soaps himself so excessively all over that it’s as if he wants to scrub away the skin that lay against her skin, as if he wants, like a snake, to slough off the old skin and grow a new one. And in the streaming water he tries to get rid of his guilt and shame.

  This was an act by two adults who both wanted the same thing.

  Yes.

  So why does he feel guilt towards her?

  Water, water, water and there is no cleansing.

  Could it be that she snacked on him as one might indulge a sudden craving? By sticking a hand in the tin and shoving a fistful of caramels into one’s mouth?

  Why, he thinks as he dries, deodorises and perfumes himself and violently brushes his teeth as if he is trying to scrub away not only the dead taste of sleep but also that of her mouth, why then his guilt and shame?

  Because he is here, in this town overrun with biker people, to see Chaja, because he is looking for her and wants to come to her pure, ideally clothed in a white Jesus robe and with the beginning of a radiant halo around his head, because he wants to atone for his guilt and shame with her, not to win her for himself, it’s too late for that, but to lose the loathing that he feels (for himself, for what he is and what he did) by formulating, by explaining, by a mea culpa that he knows will lead nowhere.

  Conscience…That sodding conscience of his…

  Here he is, only just on the way to paradise, and he’s already fouled and sinned against himself, his careful purity is covered beneath a drifting layer of perverse images.

  He shuts his eyes in the misted mirror and immediately sees, as if something was waiting for just that, his fist clawing in Antonia’s hair as he forces her head between his legs. He shakes away the thought like a wet dog shaking the drops from its fur, but the images keep coming: her, kneeling on the bed, her regal Italian arse in the air, her hands folded on her back, and he (another man, a cold mechanism) lays his left hand on her lower back, forces himself into her and slaps his right hand against her right buttock.

  He stands with his head in his hands. He is stained. Not by Antonia, she takes what she wants, but by his lust. He should have been a monk, he of all people must be capable of remaining clean and pure in the expectation of the sight of…But he fell. He fucked Antonia in all her voluptuous sexiness from every direction, he forced her onto her back and looked her in the face with the harsh expression of a ruler and said things he hadn’t wanted to say, not
this evening, just as he did things he hadn’t wanted to do.

  When he gets dressed in the little hotel room and listens to the noise in the street, he sees by the clock that he’s late.

  And off he goes again, in his dark suit and white shirt, through the crowded streets. No longer wandering now, because the clock has struck nine and he has been expected for more than an hour.

  Soon he will arrive at a house in a little street between the Catholic church and the theatre and in that house as he walks to the room that has been made ready for him, there will be a suitcase and a bed, on the little bedside table a book with a piece of paper between the pages, as if he’d been reading it only yesterday.

  Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin. But this time in Assen.

  He has bags and suitcases in various places, all with the same supply of cellophane-wrapped boxer shorts, shirts and socks, the same sponge bag containing a razor, a bottle of lotion, deodorant, toothbrush, everything a man needs to step out fresh and unscathed the morning after the night before.

  Can a man be in two places at once? Marcus can. He is staying in the smallest room in the Hotel de Jonge, where he arrived that afternoon with a suitcase, and in Kat’s house, where he opens another bag and goes to shave.

  And there he is, in the little room that Kat has arranged for him, where the bed is invitingly open, a little lamp on the bedside table, the book beside the lamp, suitcase next to the foot of the bed.

  Kat stands in the doorway and watches beneath frowning eyebrows as he prepares his quarters. Marcus lifts his bag onto the end of the bed and pulls open the zip. She leans against the doorpost, arms folded. She pushes her foot against the door, which opens slightly and then swings shut again, rests against her foot, which pushes the door open, and so on, and so on. He sets his sponge bag on the washbasin and begins unpacking.

  ‘Have you just arrived?’