The wind was chilly and Caz chose a table inside the mill rather than in the extension. The stained-glass window and old walls made her feel as if she had entered a different age. One where people still wore clogs and bonnets.
The woman who came to take her order dispelled her fantasy. Caz ordered coffee and the cheapest sandwich on the menu. In Sint-Niklaas she had been too nervous to eat, but now she was famished.
While she was waiting, she realized how tense she was. Not only because of her transport difficulties. What was she actually doing here? Who could she approach, and how?
Maybe she should simply see the outing as an adventure. Consider herself a tourist. The fewer her expectations, the smaller her chances of disappointment.
“Alstublieft.” The middle-aged woman put the coffee and an enormous sandwich on the table in front of her.
She had to hand it to the Belgians: they certainly didn’t skimp on servings and it looked delicious too.
“Pardon me. Do you live in Doel?” she asked in Afrikaans.
The woman shook her head. “No, in Kieldrecht.”
“Did you happen to live here before?”
Another shake of the head. “I’m originally from Temse.” She waved her hand at the food. “Enjoy.”
“Thanks, it looks delicious. One more question: do you happen to know someone who lives here in Doel?”
“Not really. This is a temporary job.” This time there was a firmness in the way she turned.
Caz tucked into the sandwich. Her stomach had long forgotten the morning’s yoghurt and the packet of crisps on the train. After taking a last sip of the aromatic coffee, she sat back, replete, and looked at her watch. A quarter to three. At least she had gained a few extra hours here in Doel. She had to be at the bus stop at a quarter to seven, which reminded her that she still had to find out where the bus stop was. Enough time for that.
After she had paid the bill and visited the restroom, she retraced her steps down the steep path.
Her introduction to the town was a neglected park with wooden contraptions displaying faded comic strips of “Suske en Wiske.” The long grass and collapsed structures confirmed what Tieneke had said about a ghost town.
A notice on a board some way ahead seemed to disagree: Doel = inhabited town. Respect the residents! It is forbidden to enter or damage the houses. Trespassers and vandals will be prosecuted.
Caz began to wander around, dazed. A dystopian atmosphere surrounded the uninhabited houses in varying stages of disrepair. There were clear signs of vandalism. Windows were broken, doors hung lopsidedly on rusty hinges, wrecked furniture lay strewn around.
Almost all the walls were covered in brightly colored graffiti. Much of it had clearly been done by true artists—gigantic depictions in fine detail, painted with a sure hand. Spray-painted attempts and the usual crude efforts by vandals formed a sharp contrast. The sum total was bizarre.
Caz approached a wall and read the words painted neatly on it.
Later, when all the beautiful memories
Have taken the place of my sorrow,
I might be able to express
What now I can only say with tears.
She was moved by the sadness of the words and the tacit aggression.
From one multicolored derelict home to another she went, the suitcase squeaking at her heels. What on earth had happened to this town? Here, where Ammie Pauwels had lived and fought for its continued existence. Evidently in vain.
“Niet kraken, hoor!”
Startled, Caz turned. Deep laughter lines fanned out from the corners of the dark-haired woman’s eyes, but she looked anything but friendly. Kraken? What did she mean?
“Excuse me?”
“The houses are dangerous.” Her Flemish was colloquial, but easy enough to understand. “Some are just waiting to collapse. It’s not only illegal, it’s also life-threatening to kraak, understand?”
“Kraak?” Caz felt like an idiot.
The woman pointed at her suitcase. “Stay over. Find a place to stay.”
She meant squat, Caz realized. She thought Caz was a squatter. Caz gave a slight laugh. “No, I’m just a day-tripper.”
The woman frowned. “Why are you walking around with a suitcase if your car is here?”
“No, I got a lift. I’m going further by bus.”
“But I’ve told you you can’t stay for the night. It’s dangerous. Especially for a woman. There are squatters everywhere, many of them up to mischief. They start fires. Break and smash things as far as they go. Full of drugs.”
Caz grew impatient. “And I’m telling you I’m going on by bus. I’m not staying the night.”
The woman lit a cigarette. “Schat, there’s no bus tonight. The next bus is tomorrow at six fifty-seven.”
Caz began to shake her head, ready to argue, when she realized why the times had seemed so strange. The website had used a.m. and p.m. instead of the twenty-four-hour clock.
“Oh, shit.” The word slipped out.
“You didn’t know?”
Caz shook her head. “I thought the bus was leaving at six fifty-seven tonight.” She looked around her. “Is there a B&B somewhere?”
“What does it look like?”
Caz didn’t have to answer.
The woman tilted her head. “Why do I understand you, even though you’re not speaking Dutch?”
“It’s Afrikaans. A language that developed from Dutch, among others. I’m from South Africa.
“Africa? But you’re white!”
Caz felt a slight hysteria start to rise. “There are many whites in South Africa. About five million.”
“Never!”
She was beginning to feel as if she was part of a hallucination. She’d better get to the point. “You don’t happen to have known an Ammie Pauwels? Apparently she lived here until 2000.”
“Sorry, schat, I only moved here in 2005. Legally, mind you! I have permission to rent. A relative of yours?”
How the hell did she answer that? “I’m not sure. I want to find out where she went from here.”
“Come with me.” She beckoned with her hand. “We’ll ask my neighbor. If she doesn’t know, no one will.”
Caz followed the woman to a neat house, evidently occupied.
“Wait here.” She stepped on her cigarette, knocked on the door and pushed it open. “Schatske!” she called.
“Yoo-hoo,” a voice replied from within.
The woman motioned for Caz to wait and went inside.
She heard voices, but couldn’t make out what was being said. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes lingered on.
At last the door opened again. A thin woman with grayish blonde hair accompanied the dark-haired woman.
“You’re looking for Ammie Pauwels?” the blonde woman asked.
Caz nodded.
“It was long ago. I knew her husband, not her. Just from sight. But Tobias and I served on a committee together. He died of a heart attack, in 1999. Brought on by the tension of the government’s indecision. Ammie stayed on after his death, but not very long. Lived like a recluse. Protested with us only once and almost had a fit when a reporter took a photo.
“I looked in my records but I couldn’t find anything more. I’m afraid I don’t know where she moved to.”
“Can you tell me which house was hers?”
The woman gave the address and directions to get there.
“Thanks, sorry to have bothered you.” Caz forced a smile to her lips.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for. Good day.” The blonde woman shut the door.
“I’ll show you the house,” the dark-haired woman offered.
“Thank you, that would be kind.” She had no idea what she would do to get back to Kieldrecht, but she might as well try to make the best of a
bad job.
“What happened to leave the town deserted like this?” Caz asked as they walked along.
“In the sixties or thereabouts it was decided to build a new container dock as part of the expansion of the port of Antwerp. Doel was in the way. They said the new, bigger ships wouldn’t be able to turn, which was rubbish in the end. You should see the monster ships passing here nowadays.
“Some residents fought the evictions tooth and nail. Others reluctantly agreed to sell. Then came the nuclear power station. Even greater chaos. It’s a long story, but in the end the residents of Doel were evicted—the result of poor management and rash decisions.
“The power station is closing down shortly and it’s going to cause outages all over Belgium. The government has thrown billions of euros into the water and they’re planning to follow it up with more billions.” She mentioned amounts that made Caz reel and gave some more background information before she smiled and continued.
“But I like living here. There are about two dozen residents left. Some more legal than others. Mostly we get along well. Spend time together on Sundays. Wage war against the squatters, vandals, arsonists, the raves held here over weekends. You should have heard the ruckus on New Year’s Eve!”
She stopped and pointed at the ruin of a house, colorfully painted by unskilled hands and totally uninhabitable. “Here we are.”
The roof seemed about to cave in. All the windows were broken. Bricks had fallen out of the walls. Over to one side stood a rusty garden chair, and further away, the remains of a vacuum cleaner.
Caz felt gripped by despair. Her mother had lived here. Here she was a wife to Tobias, whoever he was. In these streets she walked, probably without a thought for her daughter in distant Africa. Streets that must have looked a lot different then.
What the hell was she doing in this deserted, godforsaken polder town with its post-apocalyptic atmosphere? Here in the Land van Waas, where the tracks of the woman who gave birth to her had been covered such a long time ago.
Caz turned to the dark-haired woman. “Do you think the lady who works at the restaurant might help me get to Kieldrecht? Of course I’ll pay for the fuel and her trouble.”
The head was shaken emphatically. “She rides a bike.”
“Anyone else who might be going to Kieldrecht?”
She thought for a moment. “I’ll ask Guy. Wait here, okay?”
Caz nodded, pushed down the handle of her suitcase and sat down. The bleak desolation that enveloped the town like a fog was more tangible here in front of Ammie Pauwels’s house than anywhere else. It was as if she had landed in a broken kaleidoscope.
The man who stopped his car beside her a while later had intelligent eyes behind the lenses of his spectacles. His gray hair and beard were neatly trimmed. The face had strong features.
He asked her a question of which she could only make out “take” and “Kieldrecht.”
She nodded. Hopefully he was asking her whether she was the person who wanted to be taken to Kieldrecht. He let the engine idle while he helped her with her luggage and then pointed at the front passenger door.
As they left the town, he tried to start a conversation, but she didn’t understand his dialect. Mercifully it was only a ten-minute drive before he drew up at the bus stop and took her luggage from the trunk of the car.
She held out two ten-euro notes. He looked at her as if she had lost her mind, and declined by holding up his hand.
Moments later he was back in the car. He nodded a greeting and drove away.
A tennis ball lodged itself in Caz's throat. Not only because of the man’s kindness. The events of the past hour or two had made her emotional.
While she was waiting for the bus to Sint-Niklaas, a tune kept going through her mind. When the bus came, some of the words came to her. Something like: Say so long, Skipskop, Skipskop say goodbye. It was a song made famous by David Kramer, telling the story of the forced evacuation of the fishing village, Skipskop, in South Africa.
Just as the residents of Skipskop in the Overberg had had to make way for a missile-testing terrain almost sixty years earlier, more than a thousand residents of Doel had had to pack up and say goodbye to everything that once had been theirs, but no longer was. Of course they were compensated, but they were still forced to leave at the command of the people in control. Besides, the whole exercise had turned out to be pointless. It had all been for the sake of a dock that wasn’t used and a nuclear power station that was going to be shut down. In Afrikaans the word “doel” means purpose. Could there be a more ironic name for a town?
Ammie
Leuven
“I am absolutely fine, Lieve. Finish up and go home. Your people are waiting for their supper.” Of course she was lying. Her tongue was still lazy, her ears rang and one eye felt as if it was drooping, but Lieve’s well-intentioned fussing exhausted her even more.
“Fine? I find you collapsed on the living-room floor and now you’re fine? Miss Ammie, I know the doctor said it was only a very light stroke, but it’s a danger sign you can’t simply ignore.”
“I’ll have tests done tomorrow. You can’t do anything more for me tonight. The doctor was satisfied. Go now, Lieve. Please. I just want to rest.”
Lieve gave a protracted sigh. “Very well then. The phone is next to you. If you feel at all unwell, just press number one to dial my number. Okay?”
“Okay, Lieve.” Ammie took a sip of water. Her mouth was dry.
Lieve kept hovering.
“Goodnight, Luc.” Luc? She had wanted to say another name. “Lieve.” Her tongue found the right name. “Goodnight, Lieve.”
Erevu
Ghent
“I’ve been there, Nkoko. There’s nothing there. Doel is as dead as can be.”
“Then she probably didn’t realize it was a deserted place.” Erevu’s frustration had not abated.
Dove thought for a moment. “There are no lodgings in Doel. We must find out where she’s staying tonight.”
“How?”
“Jela. Jela has Caz’s laptop. Her cellphone is on roaming; she can only send and receive text messages. If she’s looking for a place to stay, she’ll have to do it on the internet. What a stroke of luck that list of passwords was. Now Jela can look up her incoming mail via her ISP.” Dove patted his shoulder. “Chin up, Nkoko, chin up.”
Erevu nodded. Thank goodness for Jela and Dove. This new technology was too much for him. He was going to ban it from the Congo as soon as all evil had been eradicated and he became president.
Sixteen
Caz
Leuven
Caz took a seat at one of the many street cafés near the Leuven train station. A place to stay was her first priority. Later she would think about the wisdom of the crazy trip she had embarked on.
She asked for the wifi code and as soon as she discovered she wasn’t searching for Air B&B, but airbnb, it went more quickly. She found the perfect place close to the station, but the minimum stay was four nights. It wouldn’t do, she thought. She didn’t want to spend more than two nights, at most. It would give her a day and a half in the city. Enough to go to the university and maybe play tourist for a while.
A few attempts later she hit the jackpot. The place was a little further away from the station than she had hoped, but the rates were reasonable and Jennie, the landlady, looked friendly in the photo.
She clicked on “Contact host.” There was no telephone number or email address, only space to send a message. What if Jennie didn’t check her messages tonight? It was almost seven.
There was no other way. Caz filled in the required information and sent the message.
Luc
Damme
“Luc DeReu.” He couldn’t hide his impatience at the telephone’s intrusion. He had just sat down for supper and was ravenous. He hardly ever spoiled hi
mself with steak and he didn’t want it to get cold, especially as he had managed to grill it to a perfect medium rare.
“Professor, it’s Lieve Luykens.” Her voice sounded hesitant.
He got up from the table and crossed over to the window. “Yes, Lieve?”
“Professor, it’s Miss Ammie. I wouldn’t have phoned, but she mentioned your name.”
“Pardon me?” Was it his imagination, or did Lieve sound tearful?
“Miss Ammie suffered a very light stroke earlier this afternoon. The doctor called it a transient ischaemic attack. She’s over the worst and out of danger. Nothing to worry about. We’re having tests done tomorrow. But when she said goodbye to me, she called me Luc. It was a slip of the tongue. Now I don’t know what to do. You really upset her and I didn’t like it when you cross-questioned me. Still, it seems you are in her thoughts.”
The news of the stroke, light or not, upset him more than he would have thought. “Lieve, if her condition is really not serious, maybe I could come at the weekend. If it’s serious, I’ll come tomorrow. But it won’t do her any good if my presence is just going to upset her again.”
“It’s really not serious. Except that it could be the precursor of a more serious stroke, of course. I’ve just phoned her again and she was well enough to be annoyed because I wanted to make sure she was comfortable. Anyway, if her condition had been serious, I would have stayed with her or forced her to go to hospital. Her doctor thinks it’s a warning, but he assured me it’s not dangerous in itself. He’s retired and he lives nearby. He’ll look in while I’m not there.”
“Well, okay then. Please let me know if you think I should drive over, Lieve. Like I said, I can call at the weekend. During the week it’s difficult, but if it’s an emergency, I’ll try my best to come. Please keep me posted.”
“I will, Professor.” There was another moment’s hesitation. “Professor, I don’t know if I should tell you, but she mentioned Elijah again.”
“Did she say who he was?”
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