In a Dark Wood
Page 38
House of the world…he liked the sound of it.
Let’s be honest, he thought, this is where I’m most at home. Daughters independent and on their way, no family any more, not for a long time. No one to be for. Stripped of the burden. Naked. Yes, naked as the stones.
Beth Olam.
The sunlight rose above the trees. The night was really over now. He didn’t know why it felt like that, but it was as if he had acquitted himself of a task and was now free and pure and new. He walked around the memorial, past the block of graves that lay next to it and turned off to the right, up the path that lay between two sections. On what looked like a vague crossing of grassy paths he stopped. The grass peeped out between his toes and it suddenly seemed a good idea to him to go and lie down, here, in this soft grass. To feel what it was like to be rocked on a grassy bed, to lie on the earth and feel the world spinning under you.
He dropped and smiled when his rear end met the lawn. He put his hands beside him, looked for a moment at the mottled morning light and then sank down.
The grass received him with a soft, springy embrace. It was as if he was lying not on it, but in it. Like a traveller who feels a soft, downy bed again after a long time, a pillow that smells of bleach, linen, tender as a caress.
He breathed in deeply and then, after a few seconds, just as deeply out. He set the watch on his chest, folded his hands under his belly, just above his lap, and sniffed in the smell of earth, grass and the morning breeze that blew away the clouds and wiped clean the slate of the sky for a new day.
1997–2006
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a great debt of thanks to the following people. They were prepared to dig for me in their memories or their archives, and brought me indispensable data. I name them in random order: Bert de Vries, Bernd Otter, Harry Cock, Paul van der Linden, Nico Vanderveen, Linda van der Mast.
I am very grateful to Henny de Man for her unstinting support. My special thanks to Mr and Mrs Kornmehl.
The following sources were of greater or lesser importance:
–H. Gras et al. (ed.), Geschiedenis van Assen, Assen, 2000
–W.M. Brada O.P., Zusters in Drenthe, self-published, Leusden, 1986
–Mr J.G.C. Joosting, Het archief der abdij te Assen, Leiden, 1906
–Jan Verheijen O.S.B. obl, Middeleeuwsche Nederlandsche kloosters, Amsterdam, 1947
–J.R.W. Sinninghe, Drentsche sagen, 1944
–A written memoir by Mrs J. Leget-Lezer, a copy of which the author handed me long ago.
The comic strip was drawn by Han Hoogerbrugge (www.hoogerbrugge.com). I’m very grateful to him for his collaboration. The wig used in the strip was kindly made available by Pelatti Interhair in Rotterdam.
www.dis.nu
www.marcelmoring.com
About the Author
MARCEL MÖRING is the bestselling author of Mendel, The Great Longing, In Babylon, and The Dream Room. Widely considered the Netherlands’ leading contemporary writer, he lives in Rotterdam with his wife and children.
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ALSO BY MARCEL MÖRING
The Great Longing
In Babylon
The Dream Room
Credits
Jacket illustration © Han Hoogerbrugge
Copyright
IN A DARK WOOD. Copyright © 2006 by Marcel Möring. Translation copyright © 2009 by Shaun Whiteside. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200866-4
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