EYE
Sander’s eye, focused on sturdy sensual beauty, never veers from the immediate. He has no distorting mannerisms or ideal of form. You can’t improve on Grietje or Wolfgang, he says. It’s hard enough to get them just as they are.
TAFELGESPREK
Correct enough for our house, Grietje ruled of Wolfgang and Jan coming to breakfast barebottomed but undershirted. Always wanted to, Jan grinned. Hansje does at his home, and Saartje. Wolfje said we could, it’s great. Voorhuidsadem, said Sander of a goodmorning kiss from Wolfgang, tushed by Grietje. A loving twit, said Sander. Our house cricket has magicked us all into spoiling him silly, and now Jantje can’t keep his eyes off him. Sander! Grietje pleaded. Quit teasing the whiffets, Jan’s blushing, and Wolfje is about to bolt.
JAN
Sex, says Jan at lunch, is prachtig and, trying out the word, beautiful. You’re beautiful, Sander says. Silence and thought. What does that mean, Sander, I’m beautiful? Jan covers the question with an awesome bite of sandwich, I’m beautiful coming through much bread, sardine, and cheese. Well, says Sander, you have all that long light hair and sexy blue eyes and a body that’s on its way to being tall and trim. You smile a lot. But beautiful? says Jan. Sure, says Sander. Not as beautiful as I am, because you’re still a squirt. Don’t you think Hans is beautiful? More thought, more silence, more sandwich. Hans looks left and right, liking the fun. Wolfgang studies Hans to see if he can see the beauty. I love him, Jan says, that makes him beautiful. Do you think Hansje’s beautiful? O ja! Sander says, drives me crazy.
LINE
Sander, like Bruno in his day, only wanted a context, and a fellow conspirator. Man at his most animal is not animal at all, but radically human, wishing to dissolve boundaries precisely where the animal needs to create them.
TYXH
Everything happens by chance (the wild) and by law simultaneously and integrally. Water is wild, contained by the contours of things and obedient to natural law (gravity, the chaotic nature of its own liquidity, evaporation, freezing, wind). That is, chaos and order are everywhere, their purposes opposite yet cooperative. Spirit is as wild as water, seeking its own equilibrium, as water its own level. The planets are trying to move along a wild line, held in by the sun.
XPONOC
For weeks there has been no time, or undivided time, all the hours elided, legato, none with a number, so that after abandoning the habit of supposing the day to be around four o’clock there is a fine feeling of uninterrupted time. Time becomes an ocean, air streaming above an empty field, primeval and generous.
ORCHARD
Apple and pear can be eaten at the tree, like cherry, peach, and fig, and Plato in his Laws says that hospitality should allow the wayfarer to eat, but not carry away, pear or apple in the orchard, and that children may do the same, except that they may be driven away but not hurt. Plato distinguishes between an adult fancying an apple and boys and girls who have no doubt in their minds that they can eat a whole tree of ripe cherries or half a grove of yellow pears.
JAMAICAN SUGAR
The Harmonian Compote. Fruit heaped over with a pound of refined Jamaican sugar. Apple slices shredded coconut grapes figs orange pulp, all under a hillock of sugar. Six of these a day for children. As they achieve the damoiselat, the Compote Pause in work or play becomes affectionate coupling. Willy and Sally, peuters, have a recess from setting out strawberry slips when the compote cart arrives, donkey drawn, under the supervision of the Little Bands, who must be kissed in thanks. Gerrit and Marjorie, damoisel and damoiselle, have a five-minute entanglement, tongues in each other’s mouths, hands in each other’s britches. Yick! say the peuters, when you could be glupping a compote.
ANIMUS INGRATUS
In this century we have lived off the spiritual cultures of former times, having none of our own.
EQUUS
Sander bellowing supplications to the sculptor of the horse in Niaux, to Hiroshige, to Stubbs. Painting a splendid przewalski such as we saw at the Jardin des Plantes, a mare with a daughter, and Pan Przewalski had a meter of peester out and dangling.
THE AUTUMN OF THE WEST
Reading Lévy-Bruhl’s Carnets III/IV (1938) alongside Montherlant’s for the same months, both on walks around the Bois and at La Bagatelle, the one rethinking his life’s work on the primitive mind (taking prelogicality from it, finding that it’s all a matter of attention, the mind being what it knows, not how it reasons), the other (the last Hellenistic sensibility in Europe) observing at random, with irony, with haughty disapproval, with precision. Germany in an hysteria of illusion and obscene idiocy. Huizinga walking with his hands behind his back, head lowered, along Dutch biking paths. The vigor of Lévy-Bruhl’s thought about the magic of religions and man’s allegiance to the imaginary, the acumen of Montherlant’s dark contrast of generosity and vulgarity: Europe continuing to think before the most violent barbarian attack of them all. And I a little boy, knowing nothing.
O JA!
Apple pear.
Apple apple.
Pear pear.
Pear apple.
THE ORDERS
Hero Major: scientist, agronomist, mathematician, philosopher.
Hero Minor: artist, poet, composer, architect.
Saint Major: gastronomist.
Saint Minor: lover.
FIELD
Attraction’s an invisible field of force defined by the pattern of the things attracted. Poles of Monarch butterfly’s migration like iron filings in a magnetic field. Fields in time, fields in space. Curvilinear (Crete, Jugendstil) gives way to rectilinear (Hellas, Bauhaus, De Stijl). Until identity by character absorbs again identity by sexuality we will suffer our present shallow sense of being, where psychology, looking at nothing, thinks it sees everything.
HERO
Regard. Jan home with Joris after a swim, Hansje told me bravely and only half-confused, but furious with himself for his confusion and needing somebody to talk to. They’d teased Joris, as usual, making him blush, and Jan said (the smart alec) he was going home with Joris. This to Hansje in Joris’ hearing, who, swallowing a frog, said that he wasn’t. Yes, said Jan. Joris said he was on his honor not to touch Jan or Hans, except for a friendly hug or irresistible kiss. Ook zo? He, said the cunning Jantje, wasn’t. Nor bug-eyed Hansje. Foraging, said Jan. Hans can come along next time. So Hans turned up at Florishuis, looking as if he might cry. He didn’t want me to think he was snitching on Jan. And after a while here were Joris and Jan improbably innocent and looking for Hans. Oh no, Comrade Hans, Joris said, reading his face, all Comrade Jan here and I did was have a good, an awfully good talk about friendship and about his love for you and yours for him. True, said Jan, every word. When, said Joris, do they pin the medal on me?
HOURS
Fabian says that communication is, ultimately, about creating shared time. Hans’ days are long, mine short. Sander’s days are longer than either. Genius knows rhythms. He does not stop work to talk, and likes to talk while he paints. He has begun work before he gets up, saying things like What I’m going to do today is put yellow and blue and grey together like Vermeer. Wolfgang mixes, Sander comments.
COMITATUS
Godfried and his brood. Greek hygiene and Scandinavian candor. Dutch pragmatism, also. Everything must be modern, progressive. And narrow-mindedness is not modern.
JAN SIX, WITH GLOVE
A crocodile of peuters crossed the zebra to the gracht. Dimples skipped, Freckles hopped. Hummeltje Tummeltje! Winterkoninkje! Their teacher wore a cape with a big paper daisy pinned to its collar. Cruise missiles, Joris said, will blast them all into phosphorescent ash. Sniff, he added, they smell of mint, soap, and waffles, ja?
ISLAND
On my second cup of coffee, savoring the grey rawness of the morning, when I heard a launch. Sam from the point, hallooing that he brought me friends big and little: Joris full of the triumph of his surprise, which was Hans and Jan, all of them in slicks and souwesters, the combined brightness of t
heir three smiles outshining Sam’s headlamp. You don’t believe what you see, do you? Joris shouted from the boat, handing over Hansje, then Jan, then a rucksack and a hamper of provisions. Through stinging swiveling drizzle to the cabin, the boys jumping as if on springs, Joris with his arm around my shoulder. No hassle at all with Jan’s folks, even when Kaatje said pretty bluntly over the phone that I’m a DSAP organizer in spite of being improbably young, a handsome devil, and not to be trusted two steps with Hans and Jan. How exciting for them! she said, so help me. I could hear her. And Kaatje, I can see how you like her so much, gave this double-take at the phone. She then grilled me pretty closely. I was so honest with her I blushed till my ears rang. Bruno rolled in, and we went through it all again. Gunst! is he cool. If, he said, Adriaan thinks the rascals would like going to the island with Joris here, fine. They’ll worry the piss out of you. So here we are. I can’t believe it.
AZURE TIN ELLIPSE
True, I’d written Joris saying it would be nice to see him for the weekend, and added, more to throw out a congenial idea than to be wholly serious, that it would be jolly if Jan and Hans could come along. I did not really think that he would show Kaatje the letter and tell her Lord knows what, and actually arrive here with two boys with whom he has probably already fallen in love. In love! Joris howled pounding me on the shoulder, asjeblief! Look at Jan, look at Hans. I’ve eaten the rascals all the way here with my eyes until my balls have set like concrete, my heart is jelly, my poor heart. Lieve hemel! Hans at all this bent double laughing and Jan staggered stiff-legged around him cross-eyed and with his tongue stuck out. A whinny from Joris, and: Don’t think, Kameraad Adriaan, that I won’t come right here, right now, just by being here, in my pants, all down both legs, running out over my shoes, squishing through the teeth of my zipper, splashing up over my belt buckle. Jan’s eyes were radiant, Hans lay on his back and kicked, I pulled Joris’ Lenin cap over his eyes, and commanded a firewood detail to get with it before the dark closed in.
SPIRAL SILVER
They were treading about, Hessians on patrol shoulder to shoulder, heads down, when I hallooed Ducks! a word from your captain. They saluted. What is all this? I asked sweetly. Hansje looked out of the top of his eyes, studying the weather. Jan ran his tongue over his lips. Are you miffed? he asked. Did we goof coming out with Joris? What, I asked, do you know about Joris? He prints books, Jan said, and is a Radical Socialist, he’s your friend, his cap is like Klaas Lenin’s, he belongs to the NSAP, and likes boys our age. O God, are we teasing him and making him miserable?
FIRESIDE
A sizzle of graupel mixed with fine rain made our fire with pea soup on the pothook the more friendly, exciting Joris to shine, voice and eyes and smile, with the compatibility of it all. He made the cheese and sardine sandwiches, poured the beer, set places on the hearth, patted whatever boy’s behind came within reach, and kept the fire steady as if he’d lived in the country all his life. It was Hans first who, as we came in with estovers, gave Joris a kiss on the corner of his mouth, and got one in return. That, nipper, he said a bit stunned, makes me happy, do you know? What it’s for, said Hans, it’s our way. Ome Adriaan helped us decide it. Kissing on the mouth is for girls, on the cheek is not for real, but for friends the corner of the mouth is right, and has a good tickle to it. Also, said Joris, makes my knees turn to water. See, said Jan rather ahead of things and with a mouthful of cheese, sardines, and bread, we’re not going to be horrible, Adriaan says we mustn’t, unzipping with one hand (sandwich in the other) and some trouble wriggling his penis around the pouch of his briefs so that it poked out of his jeans fly unhooded and pink. And, with a kiss for Joris that left breadcrumbs on the corner of his mouth and unbelieving surprise in his gaze, you can fiddle around with it, like after supper, if you want to. Adriaan says he won’t barf or go tharn: he’s some kind of Pythagorean Calvinist, oh ja! This with spleetogig mischief lost on Joris who put his head against the floor, holding his crotch with both hands, whimpering. Hansje, crosslegged beside me, parked his sandwich on my thigh, scrambled to his knees, and tried opening his fly like Jan, jamming his zipper halfway, needing me to get it unstuck. Between us we got his penis out, but when he sat it slid back in. Jan’s stayed out, two fingers clamped behind the glans jiffling a shake off and on. Joris with a shivering hug gathered him closer beside him and they ate thigh to thigh. While I laid out gingerbread and coffee Hans with determined fussing almost got his penis to stay on the jut out of his fly. I solved the problem by taking off his jeans and briefs altogether while he stood munching gingerbread and grunting approval that some grown-ups knew how to treat a boy. If, said Joris spilling coffee, closing his eyes, I get to take off Jantje’s jeans and nappies like that, will you give me a decent burial at sea? O wow! Jan yipped, scurrying up, hands over head to be undressed. I nod to Joris: fijn. A critical amusement on Jan’s face as Joris peeled him of his clothes, ironic misery and whoofs of pleasure on Joris’. Hansje slid backward onto my lap, butting my chin with the top of his head. Pulling off socks Joris risked a caress on Jan’s bare butt, making his cock dance its head. Naked, Jan straddled Joris’ legs and gazed at him eye to eye. Joris hugged him awkwardly, with confusion, and gave me an Oh God what do I do now? look. They rubbed noses, and Hansje said, I’m next up there, and Joris won’t think we’re prigs or that Jan and I think it’s icky you like boys. We like it that you like us. We like you because you like Jan and me to love each other. Jan, ankles locked behind Joris’ neck, leaned back in his lap and said with head upsidedown: Hansje’s mama’s not worrying a whit about us because she says she knows Adriaan and she knows Hansje better than Hansje, and that nobody as good-looking as Joris would hurt a midge. To Moeder over the phone she said that. Is Joris good-looking, Adriaan? What Hansje’s and Jantje’s lucky mothers do not know about good-looking Joris, Joris said with a whistled sigh and wide smile, is that Joris comes, as he just has, half a liter, in his pants, when he has Jantje bare-bottomed on his lap.
VERHAAL: HANS
O me O my. Well, Joris and Jantje and me, we came by train happy and excited all three of us, then by bus and boat to spend the weekend with Ome Adriaan on the island. Joris told us about printing and socialism, which Jan says is for Balkans, and the English soccer teams and all sorts of things. He’s a good talker, like Jan. As this report is real sexy I won’t leave out that Jan had a volunteer erection on the train that made his fly stick up and he sat so everybody could see it, and Joris closed his eyes in prayer. Ome A was kind of surprised to see us. After supper, or sort of in the middle of supper, Jan and I took off our britches, or rather Joris with Ome A’s OK took off Jan’s with the result that Joris shot off in his jeans, which was really true love and a great feeling, but Ome A said some of his funny things.
VERHAAL: JAN
What Adriaan said was two Arcadian panisks and a satyr with circadian erections. Joris for all his big talk is a gentle person afraid of doing something wrong. Not that any of us had much of an idea what came next. It was sexy to see Joris get out of his jeans, damp in the crotch, and his soaked and gummy briefs. Wet penis. Talk about big. So Hansje and I made love, and when we started Joris said to bury him in the Red Flag and to sing De Internationale for his funeral.
VERHAAL: HANS
So Joris was sitting Japanese and Ome A said it was in goede orde for Joris to be silly with Jan’s peter again, and Jan showed what and how and lay on his back with his legs forked out on Joris’ knees. So Ome A whispered how we could match them but backburner slow so I could take Jan’s place and drive Joris happy mad, and the space was right so that when I got spread-legged and in the sporting hands of Ome A I could pillow my head on Jan’s shoulder, and Jan his on mine. Easy for kissing and for killing Joris, who whimpered a lot, and Ome A whistled Telemann, Jan identified it, in and out of kisses and begging Joris to take his good sweet time.
VERHAAL: JAN
Add that Joris while these ardent pleasures were being administered tried to sell us Leni
n, of whom Joris says I’m disrespectful, and he and Adriaan agreed that the NSAP has two purposes: to give all young folk the right to be Hans and Jan (and Saartje and Jenny, I put in), and to blend Greek love in with all friendship and thus smooth away the abrasive edges of its difference in the context of middle-class propriety.
VERHAAL: HANS
Whoopee.
VERHAAL: JAN
When I was about to come, Joris broke our rule that he could play in our game but not us in his, and broke it again when we changed places, with Hans. Adriaan was ominously silent about this turn of events, though he pointedly handed us shirts and socks after we’d both kissed Joris on the corners of the mouth and got hugged wonderfully, and said he was a good person and our friend. We also kissed Adriaan, who hugged us as hard as Joris. Hans, naturally, had to ask him if being loved by Joris was right, and he said No. Wash the dishes and pans.
KRITIEK: ADRIAAN
Because it’s unfair to Joris, who can only want to play for keeps, whereas you two, enjoying a permissiveness that’s at best experimental and, shall we say, experiential, are simply playing.
KRITIEK: BRUNO
So? Zipper down, zipper up. Jan is making fine progress with Bach on the harpsichord and plays a mean game of checkers. Hans shows signs of someday learning to spell. Hilda says that she had not expected that Jan and Jenny would prove quite such a joy. She’s inviting Joris to supper, and will make him blush purple.
KRITIEK: JORIS
ICBMS with nuclear warheads in silos all over the VSA and Rusland.
PASTEUR
The universe is dissymmetrical. I am inclined to think that life, insofar as we can know anything about it, must be a function of the universe’s dissymmetry and all that follows from it. The universe is dissymmetrical: if the solar system could be seen in a mirror, its orbits and local motions and motions as a unity could not be superposed as an image upon reality, as a left hand can be superposed on a right. I can even foresee that all living species are primordially, in their structure, in their external forms, functions of this cosmic dissymmetry.
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