Every night, in the light of the moon, in the light of the stars, perhaps even in the dark – but then no one can see – a young man, Tuangku So-and-So, or whatever his name may be, lies in a drowned meadow somewhere near Malaya.
In a gold and silver sarong, strung up high under the armpits like a taut sleeve around his body, a narrow gold and silver cloth wound tightly around his head, a red flower, a hibiscus flower, behind one ear.
He lies straight and quiet among the moist brown and green algae. Yet he is not drowned. Neither is he asleep. He lies quietly on his back, his arms at his sides.
He keeps his eyes closed, like one who is listening. He keeps his eyes open – then he is looking through the water. Around him, in a circle, are the black women, the Sirens, singing to him.
They are singing about something, about anything, about everything.
They are singing about a proa and a woman and a ship’s mate and a cat. They are singing about a great continent, somewhere, and about a tiger. But it is all an old story to him.
Sometimes he cannot help but laugh at what they are singing; but not always.
He lies very quiet, listening –
He is a lucky man, that Tuangku So-and-So, or whatever his name may be.
He will never grow old; he will never have to die again.
Not only does he like the songs of the Sirens, he understands the songs of the Sirens –
So the story goes.
Translated by Etty Kist and James Brockway
7
Simon Vestdijk
My Brown Friend
De bruine vriend
I remember virtually nothing of the immediate surroundings of my parental home, a bulging forehead above the crumbling teeth of a shop, although I must have played there from childhood on. Fissures run through the house itself, the front seems to have been cracked by hardship, which in fact we never knew. What a host of contradictions! Instead of the rooms simply leading into each other, they (so I imagine them) fit into each other in a lopsided way, as if they had to take turns in serving as each other’s box beds. In my memories of childhood, games are delayed by mighty thresholds; the beds on the other hand are small, shrunken, as if burnt out. A pear-shaped brass lamp, gleaming with paraffin (as a small child I spoke of ‘parraffa’, with a throaty r-sound that my elder sister imitated; ‘parraffa’ for me was both paraffin and associated with snakes, but perhaps also with a variety of biting fish, one or more of which I suspected in the green, parchment-covered jars that the boys took home with them after a long afternoon’s fishing on the ditches around the town), in the evenings that lamp then illuminated very strongly and harshly the bald back of the head of my prematurely aged but lively father, who at that time usually sat at his shop accounts in clouds of tobacco smoke, drumming his feet with impatience when he couldn’t balance them, so that the sailing ship in the bell jar on the clothes cupboard clattered along with him, as if it were suddenly full of half cents and my father was prepared to give up that one half cent. In my memory my mother is beautiful and dark, but has allowed herself to become bourgeois, and prematurely aged, and even my sister seemed to be struggling against an approaching weight of years. She sang long songs passionately in the kitchen, in her room on summer evenings, when other girls grow quiet. She was always running about and in uproar, always on the point of doing something intense and decisive, a step for life. With bright-red cheeks and sparkling black eyes she flew back and forth among the neighbours, making dates for evening get-togethers. Although at the time my story begins she had only just turned nineteen, she wanted to be the life and soul of every party; she saw her youth as less of an obstacle than one more incentive, and then there was that general trait in our family: feeling disadvantaged, imagining we were despised by the little town and for that very reason trying to vie with the elite of the town dignitaries. Although well-to-do and a respected citizen, my father could of course not expect the Hon. So-and-So with his Irish setter to greet my mother in the street. He understood that, and so did my mother, although it remained a thorn in the flesh. My sister, however, celebrated her nineteenth birthday with a tantrum, because that setter had passed with a non-greeting Hon. So-and-So. She inculcated manners in me, gave me messages to deliver to Revd Kalmans about the church choir, which relied on her clear soprano, and gave me slaps under the table when I teased her about young men or young people who in her eyes were too inferior to free her from her obsession with the Hon. So-and-So. I still loved her, though. Her face enchanted me, and I still believe that she was too beautiful for the town. She was not vain, in the sense normally attached to the word, not big-headed, she was open and honest; it was just that she expected the world would bring her what she would not make any effort to attain for herself! The fact that she deliberately dressed less well than other girls, was rather an instinctive gesture than a sign of false humility. The only ambiguous attitude that I occasionally caught her out on in this respect was her complete lack of interest in my grammar-school education. But in those days secondary schools did not yet form part of girls’ education and I can only assume that she was jealous of an axiomatic privilege and demonstrated it in this way.
For me the whole of the rest of the town is built around that grammar school. It was, as it were, its Burgos Cathedral. A huge sea inlet – huge in my imagination – that created and interrupted horizons, gave birth to islands almost volcanically from the fog and then made them sink again like sandbanks in a spring tide, had made the town itself so temporary and provisional that the large, shiny building with its systematic knowledge and the mostly very energetic teachers was definitely necessary to make one believe in a permanent human settlement with a clearly circumscribed life plan. Nature squashed the town, scattered it into slums, came to an alarmed halt before the historic-town-hall, but behind its back denied it with a particularly dirty livestock market, where it glugged its way down brown gutters to the single shopping street with that strangely stuffy, suffocating, vaguely sexy smell of textiles, which were measured between thumb and index finger in no less than four different Jewish shops (my father did not know these people, although he was himself mainly a manufacturer) – and apart from that kept to the really elegant and shady quays, far too good for the ramshackle rubbish within them. In front of the country house of the non-greeting Hon. So-and-So built not so long ago (he lived there with an elder sister who was known as ‘the Hon. Miss Sticks’; not content with this distortion, at the grammar school we talked about ‘the Hon. Miss Acheron’, secretly horrified by her appearance; she was large and muscular, with a burnt-out look and a skin like grated cheese), nature spread out obligingly in a single sward of pleasure, but that was immediately the end of it, and it already reverted vengefully via views of improbably lush green meadows grazed by cows, low dunes, piles of old rust and rubbish, crooked windmills, whitened bones of rebels against the Spanish, to a horrifically bleak sea, which misty, breathing with a hollow sound, moved past basalt like a canal widened a thousand times, separated itself into a muddy little harbour, a gathering point for Calvinist skippers weakened by inbreeding, and then flowed back into itself with a couple of eddies, without surf, without horizon, scarcely any fishing boats, but lots of crabs on the dyke walking sideways, and over everything the indescribable stench of rotting jellyfish and periwinkles, which, although with an entirely different origin, most resembled in its effect on the mind that smell of yellow cotton in the high street, through which we as boys trooped, after having played at the sea for an afternoon, tired and dusty and a little anxious because, once again, everything had turned out to be so endless and futile. An old gateway with some coat of arms or other on it was the conclusion of the grey, wide, square-like extension of the shopping street. Old fishermen leaned against it and spat over massive yellow butcher’s dogs. Yes and here the sea began again, which just now one thought one had escaped. It was everywhere. On three sides of the town one saw sea (or mist); who has ever heard of such a thing? The only differenc
e was that at the gate it stank of dried dab rather than rotting jellyfish – and that suddenly, God knows where from, like a brand-new world in the chaos of mist, a lighthouse loomed up, exactly on the corner of the harbour, black and yellow, striped like a zebra, long-necked like a giraffe, and at night of course sweeping its light. For a long time I did not know the exact rhythm with which that light went to and fro; I always thought that it was not visible from land anyway and not even from close by on the sea, but that one would have to go a long, long way into that wretched element to catch sight of it like a diplomatic wink intended for the far side of the conference hall. Perhaps as far as the Gravel Bank, which was submerged at high tide, and which boys sometimes rowed around looking for shells. But the Gravel Bank was also a misty concept to me, something that was there and then not there, something that represented danger and yet consisted of ordinary sand … No need to say, after all this, how much I hated the sea. I hated the sea, because it always wanted to be different from usual, I hated it for its famous past, still present with us, that exuded the stink of dead periwinkles, for its inert anger, its nervous multiform ponderousness and the inhospitable way in which it deposited home-made boats on the dyke. If it had not been for the grammar school, I should have despaired of life, but as it was it was all right, until I was fifteen or sixteen.
So for me conscious, demonstrable human existence began with my entrance exam, an event that had already shone its illuminating rays years in advance. A wonderful time, in which one discovers things! Probably one doesn’t even feel that much happier than later, but one is more mobile, looser, more alert, more open, which the grown-up then confuses with happiness and cheerfulness. I remember young madcaps who inside were melancholics. My friend Gerard Steierman was an exception to the extent that he combined precisely a calm and sedate presence with a cheerful nature, but of a very odd kind, and definitely unyouthful in its imperturbability. With his surprised childlike eyes, his sing-song and pedantic Overijsel dialect – he seemed ingenuous; however, one gradually found out that he was a philosopher and clever in an unsuspected way. But he also always remained top of the class, without much effort, and his sceptical philosophical bent made him anything but a teacher’s pet. Later I lost sight of him. He probably became a surveyor, as he always said; he was too modest for university; anyway, being able to continue your studies was an exception in those days. After the other boys realized that their teasing and imitation of his Overijsel dialect could not make the slightest difference to the expression of those big, grey-blue circles, he immediately became popular, although on the sports field, unlike me – we played mainly rounders – he found it hard to keep up. But besides sport and homework, he had a third world!
At first he was very secretive about the ‘atomic theory’ that he had invented; it took me three long evening walks before I heard him say in a strangled tone: ‘An atom is a vertebra in the ether’ – for the first time emotionally, for the first time solemnly! – though he was always solemn, and I should have known what was coming. There followed months of weighty philosophizing, first about matter then mind, then about both, then about girls, but that didn’t last long, because Gerard was so horrified at the things I confided to him – although I found his confidences much worse – that he said nothing for days and just stared and stared, attentive and cheerful, though without any evil intent. Still, there was a slight estrangement, and from then on we philosophized only in catechism class, that is under direction. How much I would have liked to hear more about those atoms! It seemed to me a theory worthy of being hatched out in a misty place like ours. Mobile and omnipresent as they were, in the sea water, among the basalt stones, among the tobacco juice of the old fishermen, those mysteriously turning particles made up for municipal monotony almost as much as a haunted house, but I never managed to extract anything clearer in outline from Jard (as we called him, in the Zeeland way), and perhaps he had forgotten the whole theory.
I see the teachers all as young chaps with springy steps, bursting with joie de vivre and facts they wanted to impart to us; even the headmaster can’t have been older than forty. Disorder was unknown. There were murmurings about a model school, with iron discipline, maintained playfully. It was true that strange figures turned up among the pupils in the senior classes: boys who couldn’t keep up at other schools or had been expelled for worse reasons. We had them from all parts of the country. Every year, on the first day before school began, it seemed as if we had acquired some more new teachers in a pair of those surly pipe-smoking types who don’t fit into third-form desks and had their heads full of the sea or pubs or girls. Because the newcomers for all their antics were remarkably well-disciplined, the grammar school did not suffer much from its designation as a deportation colony. The outsiders, though, were highly respected by us younger boys, despite the fact that they ignored us entirely; their heroic deeds were retold, exaggerated and later attributed in turn to others who had nothing whatsoever to do with them – but for real outbreaks of wickedness, which might have been feared, there was too much Zeeland peasant blood in our classes: industrious, rather narrow-minded roundheads, nice lads for the most part, not high-flyers, not demons! Solid Dutch, with a touch of Spanish blood, so they say, blood that is used to controlling itself and being controlled. And except for the teasing to which Gerard Steierman was subjected for a while, I never noticed any kind of unpleasant tone among the local pupils; even the Jews were left unmolested. And obviously the discrimination about which my parents complained, and which, real or imagined, had left such a deep mark on my sister, passed me by without a trace.
My actual story begins in the autumn between the second and third form; the new term was preceded by a carefree long vacation with lots of fresh air, lots of conversations with Gerard Steierman and the occasional love affair of the kind one has as a boy, not very profound and fully part of the general emotional atmosphere of unfounded excitement. I was thoroughly rested and very open to new impressions. The new term was due to start in a week’s time when one afternoon Gerard and I and some other boys were walking to and fro outside the grammar school, perhaps out of impatience. Sea, meadow and canals had no more attractions for us; we had become jaded by rowing, pole vaulting and fishing; to put it bluntly we were longing for books and a teacher’s voice above our heads. Although we called the school names – of course – it was with a secret love. We discussed the possibilities of the deportation colony: what guest would we be accommodating? Look, there, Gerard’s finger pointed in the direct of the terrace of houses next to the grammar school building. Out of boredom all of us now peered in that direction, but at first noticed nothing but a few fourth-formers, who were standing in a huddle smoking. Four figures separated from them and came strolling towards us; I did not have the feeling this was very significant. Anyway, I recognized three of the four when they got closer: two outsiders from last year, Jelte Veenstra, a lad from the north of the country, who had hit a teacher up there with a knuckleduster, a gloomy John Bull by the look of him, with loutish drinker’s eyes, and the impudent, slim, Charles Desmet with immaculate hair, about who we were wont to whisper about light fingers; and finally the son of one of the Jewish shopkeepers from our high street, who was generally called Rusman, although I believe his name was Heiman Asser Polak. This Rusman, four-square in build, but with a supple gait and strikingly dark appearance – hence his nickname, which on our lips had something flattering about it – had acted for some years as a mentor to new batches of exiles, to whom he was able to remain faithful as, deliberately lazing about, he never went up from his fourth form; I had long relished the thought of being in the same class next year. Commanding respect through a kind of taciturn restraint, he did not fall at all within the category ‘Jew’, which involuntarily always invoked an element of noisiness. In addition Rusman really had a handsome face; I still remember, at about twelve, watching the rounders game, when a man behind me, a kind of skipper with rings in his ears and a grey fringe of beard stained
with tobacco juice around a weak mouth hanging open, said to someone else: ‘That’s a fine-looking young chap!’ Although there were five or six boys playing, I knew at once who was meant. It was the first time that I heard one male praised by another for his physical attractiveness, and in some way that insignificant incident took deep root in me, although I don’t think one should look for anything else in it but the joy of hearing the admiration we felt for a schoolmate confirmed by a real grown-up.
So that because all three of the boys had a more than usual significance for me, I was unprepared to find something between them, that easily outstripped them, and according to quite different criteria than they represented. The group strolled past us at a distance of ten paces, with that further member in the middle who had a limp: that was the first thing I saw about him. I thought: A boy with a limp – what’s he doing with Rusman, Desmet and Jelte Veenstra? At the same instant a look full of derision reached me, transmitted above the unfortunate hobbling movement which just became apparent. The cold self-control that his whole being expressed, the well-proportioned shape of his slim body, which seemed to bear the affliction proudly and stoically as an eternally imposed gymnastic exercise, the trait of rebelliousness and the sneering aggrieved expression around that sharply etched mouth, made no less of an impact on me. I did not know what all this meant. A tightly clenched wave of emotion rose in my throat, when the bitter image of the cripple, who was no longer paying any attention to me, had passed by. Why should that boy pay attention to me? I could still see the pale, haughtily sneering face, slightly ginger with faint summer freckles; the nose fine, short and flat; the bags under the brown eyes which peered coldly and contemptuously – and finally I saw nothing else but that seeking and groping, in a face that I had already forgotten. There is something copper-coloured about that boy, I thought. There he strolled in the distance, limping, his short brown jacket flapping in the wind and yet with such inimitable distinction in my eyes, that it was as if a prince in exile, surrounded by rough retainers – two nobles and the dragoman! – had left behind his weariness and his derisive revolt. But why had that derision been aimed at me, who knew I was inferior to no one on earth!? I may be small and quite ugly, but I am straight-limbed and muscular enough, and I think that those transition years were far from showing me in the least flattering way, as is often the case with other boys. Despite my dislike of the sea I was an excellent fisherman and swimmer; this summer I had rowed three times to the Gravel Bank! And I wasn’t stupid either, even Gerard Steierman, although he sometimes called me a fool, looked up to me! As I called the indifferent troop to mind again, I searched and searched and suddenly had the thought that Rusman, who knew everything about every boy, might have said something about it to me, just before that look hit me. I went off looking for the rest of the day, in a vague anxiety, a dark enchantment. Gerard and the others didn’t even know his name.
The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) Page 10
